An error control system with multiple-stage forward error corrections

A robust error control coding system is presented. This system is a cascaded FEC (forward error control) scheme supported by parity retransmissions for further error correction in the erroneous data words. The error performance and throughput efficiency of the system are analyzed. Two specific examples of the error control system are studied. The first example does not use an inner code, and the outer code, which is not interleaved, is a shortened code of the NASA standard RS code over GF(2⁸). The second example, as proposed for NASA uses the same shortened RS code as the base outer code C₂, except that it is interleaved to a depth of 2. It is shown that both examples provide high reliability and throughput efficiency even for high channel bit-error rates in the range of 10^-2