In this paper, we study the impact of locality on the decoding of binary
cyclic codes under two approaches, namely ordered statistics decoding (OSD) and
trellis decoding. Given a binary cyclic code having locality or availability,
we suitably modify the OSD to obtain gains in terms of the Signal-To-Noise
ratio, for a given reliability and essentially the same level of decoder
complexity. With regard to trellis decoding, we show that careful introduction
of locality results in the creation of cyclic subcodes having lower maximum
state complexity. We also present a simple upper-bounding technique on the
state complexity profile, based on the zeros of the code. Finally, it is shown
how the decoding speed can be significantly increased in the presence of
locality, in the moderate-to-high SNR regime, by making use of a quick-look
decoder that often returns the ML codeword.Comment: Extended version of a paper submitted to ISIT 201
