BEAST decoding for block codes

BEAST is a Bidirectional Efficient Algorithm for Searching code Trees. In this paper, it is used for decoding block codes over a binary-input memoryless channel. If no constraints are imposed on the decoding complexity (in terms of the number of visited nodes during the search), BEAST performs maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding. At the cost of a negligible performance degradation, BEAST can be constrained to perform almost-ML decoding with significantly reduced complexity. The benchmark for the complexity assessment is the number of nodes visited by the Viterbi algorithm operating on the minimal trellis of the code. The decoding complexity depends on the trellis structure of a given code, which is illustrated by three different forms of the generator matrix for the (24, 12, 8) Golay code. Simulation results that assess the error-rate performance and the decoding complexity of BEAST are presented for two longer codes. Copyright (C) 2004 AEI.