Reed-Solomon error control systems for bidirectional fading channels

Various properties unique to Reed-Solomon codes can be used to full advantage in the development of error control systems for bidirectional wireless communication systems. An analytic framework is provided for the computation of error and erasure rates at the input to the Reed-Solomon decoder after transmission over a Rayleigh fading channel. A simple method is then demonstrated for using a bounded distance RS decoder in a type-I hybrid-ARQ protocol. This protocol provides substantially better reliability performance than FEC systems at the expense of a moderate reduction in throughput. The Reed-Solomon type-I protocol can then be used as the foundation for a code combining system. it is shown that the code combining system provides slightly better reliability performance than the type-I protocol over Rayleigh fading channels with background noise while providing a significant improvement in the throughput performance