Analysis on a hidden Markov channel model

We investigate a hidden Markov channel model which is a special case of Fritchman (1967) model with attractive features. We obtain a closed form of the channel capacity in terms of the transition matrix coefficients, derive statistics of the channel, discuss how to evaluate the block error control code performance, with or without interleaver, based on the channel model. We also show how to parameterize the model parameters efficiently. The complexity of parameterizing the model grows only linearly with the number of parameters. This model is promising in modeling bursty communication channels and storage channels