This paper deals with the demodulation of automatic identification system (AIS) signals received by a satellite. More precisely, an error correction algorithm is presented, whose computational complexity is reduced with respect to that of a previously considered approach. This latter approach makes use of the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) of a message as redundancy, in order to correct transmission errors. In this paper, the CRC is also considered as a correction tool, but only a part of it is used for that purpose; the remaining part is only used as an error detection means. This novel approach allows the decoding performance to be adapted to the noise power, and provides a reduction of the computational complexity. Simulation results obtained with and without complexity optimization are presented and compared in the context of the AIS system.