Polar Coding for Noisy Write-Once Memories (Cal Tech lead)

Write-once memory is a model for data-storage devices, where a set of binary cells are used to store data, and the cell levels can only increase when the data is rewritten. The WOM model was recently identified as a good model for flash memories, where rewriting delays expensive block erasures and by that leads to better preservation of cell quality and higher performance.

This technology is a coding scheme for WOM that incorporates error-correction capabilities to protect from noise in the process of writing data to the memory. The coding scheme is based on a nesting of non-linear polar codes.