Bandwidth-efficient forward-error-correction-coding for long burst noise channels

Three types of errors occur in satellite communications: random bit errors, burst errors, and synchronization errors. Random bit errors are randomly distributed in a block of data, and are always present (i.e., constant error). Random bit errors are caused by atmosphere or electronic equipment. Burst errors are localized, and are created by some sudden change in the communications channel (e.g., antenna pointing errors). Synchronization errors are caused by the failure of the receiver to detect the block boundaries. Burst noise with low signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) can cause long localized burst errors. Long burst errors can lead to synchronization errors. Many communication channels contain both random and burst noise.;In many communication systems where the bandwidth is fixed, coding rate is an important factor. Our research is unique because it compares an erasure correction code, such as the Information Dispersal Algorithm (IDA), with Turbo Product Codes (TPC) where coding rate is high and burst errors are long. Coding rate of TPC is ⅓; therefore, it must be heavily punctured to obtain a high coding rate. We set coding rate for both TPC and IDA at 0.875. Most of the work in the area of burst error correction considers only short burst errors or low coding rates (e.g., ⅓) where our research assumes high coding rate and long burst errors.;Presented here is IDA, a product code with a high coding rate, that is capable of correcting both random bit errors and long burst errors. The product code uses two different Forward-Error-Correction-Codes (FECC). One for random bit error correction and the other for burst error correction. In the horizontal direction (i.e., inner code), we use any FECC to correct random bit errors. In the vertical direction (i.e., outer code), we use any erasure correction code, such as IDA, to correct long burst errors. The IDA can be implemented using Reed Solomon (RS) codes. Faster and more efficient codes can be used to implement IDA, but they are not currently implemented in hardware. The IDA can be used to design bandwidth-efficient FECC for a channel with burst noise.;Our research presents the analysis, design, implementation, and testing of IDA. The IDA has been implemented in software using the RS codes. We compared its performance with that of TPC. Assuming a well-defined channel with long burst noise (i.e., many bit errors) and a large block size, we showed that if symbol-by-symbol reliability is not available (i.e., unable to detect burst noise boundaries), then IDA will perform better than TPC in terms of bit and block error rates. However, if symbol-by-symbol reliability is available, then IDA may perform as well as TPC in terms of block error rate, while TPC will always have a lower bit error rate.