Study of Forward Error Correction using Reed—Solomon Codes

Digital communication system is used to transport an information bearing signal from the source to a user destination via a communication channel. Channel coding is used for providing reliable information through the transmission channel to the user. In channel coding the number of symbols in the source encoded message is increased in a controlled manner in order to facilitate two basic objectives at the receiver one is Error detection and other is Error correction. It is used to reduce the level of noise and interferences in electronic medium. The amount of error detection and correction required and its effectiveness depends on the signal to noise ratio (SNR) [2]. In digital communication, a channel code is a broadly used term mostly referring to the forward error correction code. Forward error correction (FEC) is a system of error control for data transmission, whereby the sender adds redundant data to its messages, also known as an error correction code. The advantage of forward error correction is that a back-channel is not required, or that retransmission of data can often be avoided, at the cost of higher bandwidth requirements on average. In particular, FEC information is usually added to most mass storage devices to protect against damage to the stored data [3].