Forward error correction decoding avoidance based on predicted code block reliability

1. A method for performing forward error correction (FEC) avoidance in a receiver of a communications device, the method comprising:

determining a reliability metric value of one or more received code blocks wherein the reliability metric value increases with increasing probability of decoding success and is based on the actual reception of code blocks;

determining a code block reliability threshold value;

comparing the reliability metric value to the reliability threshold value; and

disabling a FEC decoder in the communications device when the reliability metric is below or equal to the reliability threshold wherein the reliability metric is a measure based on the collective statistics of a Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) of the individual bits in the code block.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising enabling the FEC decoder when the reliability metric is above the reliability threshold.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising determining channel parameters of the received channel, the channel parameters comprising one or more of modulation type, code block size, number of retransmissions, or code rate.

4. The method of claim 2 further comprising performing an integrity check on decoded code blocks and sending a Hybrid Automatic Repeat request (HARQ) acknowledgment (ACK) to a transmitter when the integrity check is successful, sending a HARQ negative acknowledgment (NAK) when the integrity check is not successful and sending a HARQ NAK when the FEC decoder is disabled.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the determining of the reliability threshold further comprises performing a lookup of the reliability threshold value in a table stored in memory, the table containing one or more reliability threshold values, each threshold being associated with defined channel parameters.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising entering a training mode comprising:

enabling the FEC decoder;

performing an integrity check on decoded code blocks and if the integrity check fails:

determining a threshold value for the determined channel parameters;

updating a threshold in a threshold table for the determined channel parameters based upon the failure of the decoding if the reliability metric exceeds the threshold;

sending the HARQ NAK to a transmitter in a communications network.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein if the integrity check passes:

determining the threshold value for the determined channel parameters;

updating a threshold in a threshold table for the determined channel parameters based upon the success of the decoding if the reliability metric is below or equal to the threshold;

sending the HARQ ACK to the transmitter in the communications network.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the communications device is a mobile wireless communications device operable in a mobile wireless communications network.

9. A forward error correction (FEC) avoidance device, for use in a communications device, the FEC avoidance device comprising:

a metric computation unit for determining a reliability metric value of one or more received code blocks processed by a receiver wherein the reliability metric value increases with increasing probability of decoding success and is based on the actual reception of code blocks; and

a decision unit for determining a reliability threshold value and comparing the reliability metric value to the reliability threshold value to selectively disable a FEC decoder of the communications device to avoid the decoding process when the reliability metric is below or equal to the reliability threshold wherein the reliability metric is a measure based on the collective statistics of a Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) of the individual bits in the code block.

10. The forward error correction avoidance device of claim 9 further comprising:

a training unit, which when operating in a training mode, uses pass or fail results of an integrity check performed on received code blocks to determine if the reliability threshold should be added or modified based upon a determined reliability metric value.

11. The forward error correction avoidance device of claim 9 wherein the decision unit requests that a hybrid automatic request (HARQ) negative acknowledgment by a HARQ process be sent to a transmitter when the FEC decoder is disabled.

12. The forward error correction avoidance device of claim 9 further comprising a table stored in memory of the communications device, the table containing one or more threshold entries associated with one or more channel parameters wherein the decision unit determines the threshold value by performing a lookup in the table.

13. The forward error correction avoidance device of claim 12 wherein the channel parameters of the received RF channel comprising one or more of modulation type, code block size, number of retransmissions, or code rate.

14. The forward error correction avoidance device of claim 13 wherein the training unit utilizes results of an integrity check on decoded code blocks when the decoder is enabled, and if a fail result occurs determines a threshold for the determined channel parameters; updates a threshold value in a threshold table for the determined channel parameters based upon the failure of the decoding if the reliability metric exceeds the threshold; and if a pass result occurs determines a threshold for the determined channel parameters; updates a threshold value in a threshold table for the determined channel parameters based upon the success of the decoding if the reliability metric is below or equal to the threshold.

15. The forward error correction avoidance device of claim 14 wherein the FEC decoder is one of a turbo decoder, a low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder; a block code decoder, a Reed-Solomon decoder, a product code decoder, or a convolutional decoder.

16. The forward error correction avoidance device of claim 9 wherein the decision unit disables the decoder by blocking code blocks from being transferred to the decoder or by communicating with the decoder to stop the decoding process.

17. The forward error correction avoidance device of claim 9 wherein the communications device is a mobile wireless communications device operable in a mobile wireless communications network.

18. The method of claim 1 wherein the collective statistics comprise Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) average measurement with the measurement being made over the code block.

19. The method of claim 1 wherein the collective statistics comprise Effective Exponential SNR mapping (EESM) measurement with the measurement being made over the code block.

20. The method of claim 1 wherein the collective statistics comprise mutual information measure of the received RF channel with the measurement being made over the code block.

21. The method of claim 1 comprising:

deciding whether or not to decode a transport block, the transport block comprising multiple code blocks, by:

determining the reliability metric for each code block of the transport block;

as a function of the individual reliabilities of the code blocks, deciding whether or not to decode the code blocks of the transport block.