Efficient ML Decoding for Quantum Convolutional Codes

A novel decoding algorithm is developed for general quantum convolutional codes. Exploiting useful ideas from classical coding theory, the new decoder introduces two innovations that drastically reduce the decoding complexity compared to the existing quantum Viterbi decoder. First, the new decoder uses an efficient linear-circuits-based mechanism to map a syndrome to a candidate vector, whereas the existing algorithm relies on a non-trivial lookup table. Second, the new algorithm is cleverly engineered such that only one run of the Viterbi algorithm suffices to locate the most-likely error pattern, whereas the existing algorithm must run the Viterbi algorithm many times. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm allows us to simulate and present the first performance curve of a general quantum convolutional code.