According to some embodiments, a method of operation of a transmit node in a wireless communication system comprises performing polar encoding of a set of K information bits to thereby generate a set of polar-encoded information bits. The K information bits are mapped to the first K bit locations in an information sequence SN. The information sequence SN is a ranked sequence of N information bit locations among a plurality of input bits for the polar encoding where N is equivalent to a code length. A size of the information sequence SN is greater than or equal to K. The information sequence SN is optimized for the specific value of the code length (N). The method may further comprise transmitting the set of polar-encoded information bits.