Readable erasures improve the performance of Reed-Solomon codes (Corresp.)

Since well-known decoding algorithms [1],[2] are able to correct both character errors and character erasures with -ary Reed-Solomon codes, some modulation and demodulation schemes designed to be used with such codes provide a channel that has inputs and outputs, of which correspond to the inputs and one of which corresponds to the "erasure" symbol. This correspondence points om the relative advantages offered by a slightly more refined demodulation scheme, which creates a digital channel that has inputs and outputs, of which correspond to "strong" receptions of the inputs and of which correspond to "weak" receptions of the inputs. For decoding purposes, all weak outputs may be treated as erasures, but the fact that the channel now provides additional information facilitates improved decoding performance by reading the weak characters under the erasures.