MODIFIED MINIMUM-WEIGHT DECODING FOR REED-SOLOMON CODES

The authors describe an improvement to the minimum-weight decoding (MW D) algorithm for Reed-Solomon (RS) codes. The modification improves th e probability of the MWD algorithm 'trapping' the error pattern by squ aring each of the terms in the received codeword resulting in a transf ormation which changes the order of the symbols while maintaining the cyclic properties of the codeword. The results of computer simulations are presented which show that the modified decoder provides an improv ement in error performance of similar to 1 dB over the conventional te chnique with no increase in decoder complexity. The results show that the modified technique achieves an error performance close to that of maximum-likelihood algorithms with similar to 1/6 the complexity.