Decoding of 2D convolutional codes over an erasure channel

In this paper we address the problem of decoding 2D convolutional codes over the erasure channel. To this end we introduce the notion of balls around a burst of erasures which can be considered an analogue of the notion of sliding window in the context of 1D convolutional codes. The main idea is to reduce the decoding problem of 2D convolutional codes to a problem of decoding a set of associated 1D convolutional codes. We first show how to recover bursts of erasures that are distributed on vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines. Finally we outline some ideas to treat any burst of erasures distributed randomly on the 2D plane.