VHDL Implementation of a (255,191) Reed Solomon Coder for DVB-H

This paper describes two variations of different implementations of a (255,191) RS-coder. The RS-code is a powerful error correction tool that is used to ensure the detection and necessary correction of errors in communication channels, in this case DVB-H (digital video broadcasting for handhelds). DVB-H is an extended standard based on DVB-T The (255,191) RS-code enables mobile reception on small handheld devices under changing reception conditions. Both implementations focus on VHDL (very high speed integrated circuit hardware description language). VHDL is a high level programming language for programmable logic devices, in this case FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays). The first implementation using logic gates only is much faster. The second implementation takes care of features like "on chip RAM" and is smaller. Both implementations are discussed and compared. By changing a few parameters it is possible to generate other RS-coders like the (204,188) RS-coder used in DVB-T