ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors present a type of code called a Reed-Solomon code. Reed-Solomon codes, like BCH codes, have polynomial codewords, are linear, and can be constructed to be multiple-error correcting. However, Reed-Solomon codes are significantly better than BCH codes in many situations because they are ideal for correcting error bursts. The BCH error correction method can also be used to find the error positions in a received Reed-Solomon polynomial. However, because there is more than one possible coefficient for each term in a Reed-Solomon polynomial, knowledge of the error positions alone is not generally sufficient to correct the polynomial. Rather than combining the BCH error correction method for identifying error positions in received polynomials with a separate method for actually correcting errors, the authors also present an entirely new method for both identifying and correcting errors in Reed-Solomon polynomials.
