performing segmentation of to-be-encoded information bits of a length into respective quantities of different types of segments, wherein:

the different types of segments are among (b−a+1) types of segments that correspond to (b−a+1) different segment code lengths, wherein:

a, and b are positive integers;

the (b−a+1) types of segments comprise a minimum-length segment that has the minimum segment code length of 2 ^a among the (b−a+1) types of segment code lengths, and a maximum-length segment that has the maximum segment code length of 2 ^b among the (b−a+1) types of segment code lengths, and

the respective quantities of the different types of segments are determined based on the length of the to-be-encoded information bits and a code rate in an orderly manner, wherein the orderly manner comprises firstly determining a quantity of the maximum-length segments and lastly determining a quantity of the minimum-length segments, and

performing polar code encoding on the respective quantities of the different types of segments of the to-be-encoded information bits to obtain encoded output bits.