Confusions and Erasures of Error-Bounded Block Decoders with Finite Blocklength

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Han, Bin, Zhu, Yao, Schaefer, Rafael F., Caire, Giuseppe, Schmeink, Anke, Poor, H. Vincent, Schotten, Hans D.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Han, Bin
Zhu, Yao
Schaefer, Rafael F.
Caire, Giuseppe
Schmeink, Anke
Poor, H. Vincent
Schotten, Hans D.
author_facet Han, Bin
Zhu, Yao
Schaefer, Rafael F.
Caire, Giuseppe
Schmeink, Anke
Poor, H. Vincent
Schotten, Hans D.
contents This paper investigates two distinct types of block errors - undetected errors (confusions) and erasures - in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels with error-bounded block decoders operating in the finite blocklength (FBL) regime. While block error rate (BLER) is a common metric, it does not distinguish between confusions and erasures, which can have significantly different impacts in cross-layer protocol design, despite upper-layer protocols universally assuming physical (PHY) errors manifest as packet erasures rather than undetected corruptions - an assumption lacking rigorous PHY-layer validation. We present a systematic analysis of confusions and erasures under BLER-constrained maximum likelihood (ML) decoding. Through sphere-packing analysis, we provide analytical bounds for both block confusion and erasure probabilities, and derive the sensitivities of these bounds to blocklength and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on this topic in the FBL regime. Our findings provide theoretical validation for the block erasure channel abstraction commonly assumed in medium access control (MAC) and network layer protocols, confirming that, for practical FBL codes, block confusions are negligible compared to block erasures, especially at large blocklengths and high SNR.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_16665
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Confusions and Erasures of Error-Bounded Block Decoders with Finite Blocklength
Han, Bin
Zhu, Yao
Schaefer, Rafael F.
Caire, Giuseppe
Schmeink, Anke
Poor, H. Vincent
Schotten, Hans D.
Information Theory
This paper investigates two distinct types of block errors - undetected errors (confusions) and erasures - in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels with error-bounded block decoders operating in the finite blocklength (FBL) regime. While block error rate (BLER) is a common metric, it does not distinguish between confusions and erasures, which can have significantly different impacts in cross-layer protocol design, despite upper-layer protocols universally assuming physical (PHY) errors manifest as packet erasures rather than undetected corruptions - an assumption lacking rigorous PHY-layer validation. We present a systematic analysis of confusions and erasures under BLER-constrained maximum likelihood (ML) decoding. Through sphere-packing analysis, we provide analytical bounds for both block confusion and erasure probabilities, and derive the sensitivities of these bounds to blocklength and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on this topic in the FBL regime. Our findings provide theoretical validation for the block erasure channel abstraction commonly assumed in medium access control (MAC) and network layer protocols, confirming that, for practical FBL codes, block confusions are negligible compared to block erasures, especially at large blocklengths and high SNR.
title Confusions and Erasures of Error-Bounded Block Decoders with Finite Blocklength
topic Information Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16665