Adaptive soft - decision decoding for array codes

An adaptive decoding scheme is introduced that achieves efficient soft-decision decoding for row-and-column parity array codes. The special structure of array codes is exploited to make effective use of hard-decision methods to realize soft-decision decoding. This leads to considerable reduction in decoding complexity as the amount of soft-decision computation varies with channel conditions. It is shown that the new decoding algorithm guarantees bounded distance performance. Simulation results indicate that the actual improvement of decoding performance over uncoded systems and previous decoding methods is significant.