Reduced Lists of Error Patterns for Maximum Likelihood Soft Decoding

Ordinarily a vast population of error patterns is encountered in maximum likelihood soft-decision syndrome decoding of a binary linear block code. An approach is introduced for creating a substantially reduced family of error patterns. Some properties of the members of the reduced class are presented. Substantial computational gain is demonstrated through direct and, to a smaller extent, by coset-decoding implementations based on predetermined lists that specify the error patterns belonging to the reduced family.