Erdal Arıkan and Polar Codes | Generated by AI
Early Life and Education
Erdal Arıkan was born in 1958 in Turkey. He pursued his undergraduate studies in electrical engineering at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, earning his B.S. degree in 1979. Demonstrating early academic promise, he moved to the United States for advanced studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). There, he obtained his M.S. in 1981 and Ph.D. in 1985, both in electrical engineering, under the supervision of renowned information theorist Robert J. McEliece. His doctoral dissertation focused on “Channel polarization: A method for constructing capacity-achieving codes for symmetric binary-input memoryless channels,” laying the groundwork for his later groundbreaking work in coding theory.
Academic and Professional Career
Arıkan returned to Turkey in 1987 and joined the faculty of METU as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, where he progressed through the ranks to become a full professor in 1994. In 2003, he transitioned to Bilkent University in Ankara, where he has served as a professor in the same department ever since. At Bilkent, Arıkan has mentored numerous graduate students and collaborated on research in digital communications, information theory, and signal processing. He has also held visiting positions at institutions like UIUC and the University of Cambridge, enriching his global academic network. As of 2025, he continues to lead research initiatives at Bilkent, focusing on advanced coding techniques for next-generation wireless systems.
Throughout his career, Arıkan has authored over 100 publications in top-tier journals and conferences, including the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. His teaching emphasizes practical applications of theoretical concepts, and he has contributed to curriculum development in communication systems.
Key Contributions to Information Theory and 5G
Arıkan is best known for inventing polar codes in 2009, a revolutionary channel coding scheme that achieves the capacity of symmetric binary-input discrete memoryless channels (B-DMCs) while being computationally efficient. Published in his seminal paper “Channel Polarization: A Method for Constructing Capacity-Achieving Codes for Symmetric Binary-Input Memoryless Channels,” polar codes use a phenomenon called “channel polarization,” where synthetic channels are created that either become near-perfect or near-useless, allowing reliable data transmission at Shannon’s theoretical limit.
This innovation has had profound implications for modern telecommunications, particularly in 5G New Radio (NR) standards. In 2016, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)—the global body standardizing mobile networks—adopted polar codes as the coding scheme for the control channels in 5G NR, marking the first time a code explicitly designed via information-theoretic principles was deployed in a major wireless standard. This choice outperformed alternatives like LDPC codes for short-block scenarios, enabling lower latency, higher reliability, and energy efficiency critical for 5G applications such as ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) and massive machine-type communications (mMTC).
Beyond 5G, Arıkan’s work on polar codes has influenced 6G research, including extensions to non-binary codes, spatially coupled polar codes, and their integration with machine learning for adaptive coding. He has also contributed to multi-user information theory, successive cancellation decoding algorithms, and quantum information theory, bridging classical and emerging paradigms.
Awards and Recognition
Arıkan’s contributions have earned him prestigious accolades:
- 2010 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award for his polar codes paper.
- 2013 IEEE Alexander von Humboldt Research Award for outstanding contributions to information theory.
- 2018 IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award, recognizing his impact on practical communications systems.
- 2022 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, one of the highest honors in the IEEE, for “pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of error-correction coding, particularly the invention of polar codes.”
- Election as a Fellow of the IEEE (2008) and the Turkish Academy of Sciences.
In 2025, he received the inaugural xAI Innovation in Communications Award for advancing AI-assisted coding in wireless networks, highlighting the intersection of his work with machine intelligence.
Personal Impact and Legacy
Arıkan’s approachable demeanor and commitment to open-source implementations (e.g., polar code simulators) have democratized access to advanced coding tools. He remains active in the information theory community, serving on editorial boards and organizing workshops. His legacy lies not only in enabling the backbone of 5G but also in inspiring a new generation of engineers to pursue theoretically sound yet practically viable solutions for global connectivity challenges.
For further reading:
Wikipedia: Erdal Arıkan
Bilkent University Profile
IEEE Hamming Medal Citation
3GPP Polar Codes Adoption