Decoders are limited less by arithmetic than by the energy spent moving data between memory and logic. This work asks what happens when the error-correcting decoder stops being a conventional digital circuit.
The recursive electro-optical decoder processes LLR signals directly in the optical domain, minimises the number of optoelectronic conversions, and uses analog circuits only for decision-making. This bypasses the von Neumann bottleneck instead of optimising around it.
The measured gain is at least five orders of magnitude in energy efficiency over electronic counterparts. The theoretical analysis shows power scaling with codeword length rather than with computational complexity, which is what makes high-throughput, energy-constrained systems practical.
Published in IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems, and extended by the granted Chinese invention patent CN202411864690.5.