Dynamic Chase decoding algorithm

Chase decoders permit flexible use of reliability information in algebraic decoding algorithms for error-correcting block codes of Hamming distance, d. The least complex version of the original Chase algorithms ("Chase-3") uses roughly d/2 trials of a conventional binary decoder, after which the best decoding result is selected as the final output. On certain channels (e.g., AWGN, Rayleigh fading), this approach achieves asymptotically the same performance as maximum likelihood decoding. The performance of Chase-like decoders with even fewer trials is studied. Most strikingly, it turns out that asymptotically optimal performance can be achieved by a dynamic version which uses only about d/8 trials.