CODES CORRECTING PHASED BURST ERASURES

We introduce a family of binary array codes of size t x n, correcting multiple phased burst erasures of size t. The codes achieve maximal co rrecting capability, i.e., being considered as codes over CF (2(t)) th ey are MDS. The length of the codes is n = (l=1)Sigma(L) ((T)(l)) wher e L is a constant or is slowly growing in t. The complexity of encodin g and decoding is proportional to rnmL, where r is the number of corre ctable erasures, and m is the smallest number such that 2(t) = 1 modul e m. This compares favorably with the complexity of decoding codes obt ained from the shortened Reed-Solomon codes having the same parameters .