On resource effective high-throughput Reed-Solomon decoders

On resource constrained systems such as wireless sensing applications the need to have robust error-free communications is counterbalanced by the power and hardware requirements. The choice of Forward Error Correction (FEC) is an important factor in terms of area, power, and energy. This paper studies several implementations of the decoder for Reed-Solomon (RS) codes in Galois Field GF(2⁸), and compares the advantages to be had in using close form solutions for the key equation compared with more traditional iterative approach. Moreover we investigate the hardware implementation of an alternative method to the Chien search to find root of a polynomial over GF(2^m).