The probability of error performance of Reed-Solomon codes over q-ary nonsymmetric channels

The performance of the binary symmetric channel (BSC) together with an RS code over GF(q) is assessed and compared to that of a q-ary symmetric channel (QSC) used with the same code. The results indicate that, with coding, the loss in performance of BSC as compared to that of QSC, remains within 20% of the uncoded case as far as the error probability performance is concerned. Therefore, taking bandwidth considerations into account, the performance of the BSC becomes superior to that of QSC, where in the latter case bandwidth requirements asymptotically grow to infinity with increasing q