Waterfilling-Like Multiplicity Assignment Algorithm for Algebraic Soft-Decision Decoding of Reed-Solomon Codes

In this paper, a simplified method for algebraic soft- decision decoding of Reed-Solomon codes, which is based on the Chernoff bound algorithm proposed by El-Khamy and McEliece, is presented. This algorithm greatly reduces the computational complexity of the Chernoff bound algorithm while maintaining good performance. Different from previous front-end methods, which operate in the probability domain, the proposed algorithm achieves better performance by assigning multiplicity in the log probability domain.