Soft-decision decoding of Reed-Solomon codes

This paper proposes a new soft-decision decoding procedure for the Reed-Sol omon code. As the first step, the reliability function for the decoded esti mation symbol is defined. To determine the estimated symbol and the reliabi lity efficiently, an open trellis diagram is proposed from which the candid ates for the estimated symbol, as well as the respective likelihoods, can b e determined. Then, a new decoding procedure is proposed, by which the deco ding error rate can be reduced by effectively utilizing the reliability. La stly, the performance of the defined reliability function is evaluated by a computer simulation, and the effectiveness of the reliability function is verified. The proposed decoding method and the traditional decoding methods are compared, and the effectiveness of the proposed decoding method is ver ified. (C) 1999 Scripta Technica.