Forward error control for future trans-oceanic optical systems

This paper is concerned with an assessment of a range of (forward error control) FEC options appropriate to submarine transmission systems. Both established and novel coding arrangements are considered and promising avenues for further investigation are identified. We first briefly review the currently proposed RS tributary coding arrangement. We then present alternative coding schemes which offer comparable error performance at the critical region of system operation but with considerably reduced complexity. Implementation aspects, such as tributary versus line rate coding and hard decision versus soft decision decoding, are then discussed. Finally, convolutional codes are revisited and the implications of recently discovered high rate punctured convolutional codes for this application are discussed