Erasure decoding in burst-error channels

Burst-error channels have been used to model a large class of modern communication media, and the problem of communicating reliably through such media has received much study [1]-[9]. Existing techniques include two-way communication schemes that involve error detection and retransmission, and schemes that utilize error correcting codes in code interleaving. The error-detection and retransmission scheme is simple, but its applicability has been restricted to limited environments. On the other hand, the concept of code interleaving has proved to be versatile and effective. Code interleaving distributes the error detection and correction burden among the component codes and thus lowers the overall redundancy requirement. However, the memory characteristics of the burst-error channel have not been used. This omission has prompted the investigation presented in this paper to utilize the inherent information embedded in the code interleaving scheme when used with burst-error channels. The concept of erasure decoding is introduced, leading to some useful coding and decoding strategies. Theoretical formulations are devised to predict code performance, and their validity is verified with computer simulations.