Extra Points - Reed-Solomon Codes

Reed-Solomon Codes

This paper was written by Martyn Riley and Iain Richardson

Reed-Solomon codes are block-based error correcting codes with a wide range of applications in digital communications and storage.The number and type of errors that can be corrected depends on the characteristics of the Reed-Solomon code.

Reed-Solomon codes are used to correct errors in many systems, some of them are:

• High-speed modems such as ADSL, xDSL, etc.
• Satellite communications
• Storage devices (including tape, Compact Disk, DVD, barcodes, etc)

Reed-Solomon codes have many advantages. They provide excellent error-correcting abilities since they reach the Singleton bound.

Reed-Solomon codes, abbreviated RS codes, are designed by oversampling a polynomial constructed from the data. The message to send is mapped to a polynomial and the codeword is defined by evaluating it at several points.

In this pdf can find a little more definition on Reed-Solomon codes and examples of how they work.

<http://sidewords.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/thesis.pdf>

Other applications

• REED SOLOMON calculator for QRCODE barcode: Error correction example The QRCODE 2D barcode uses REED SOLOMON algorithm to add error detection and correction information to source data.
• Area-efficient reed-solomon decoder for 10 Gbps satellite communication: This paper propose an area-efficient pipeline-balancing Reed-Solomon decoder for 10 Gbps satellite communication. The proposed RS (244,212) is based on TD-iBM Key Equation Solver architecture, and Fixed-Factor Syndrome Computation & Chien Search.