Abstract
Error correcting codes can play a key role in improving the efficiency and reliability of digital communications. One way to simplify the decoder is by using concatenated codes. Reed-Solomon codes have been popular as an outer code of concatenated codes because of their feature of maximum minimum distance between code words. In this paper, we present Vector Symbol Decoding (VSD) with list symbol decisions as a relatively simple and high performance decoding technique for convolutional outer codes. The performance of VSD is evaluated by two computerized approaches. The first one is by developing recursive equations based on the property of the decoder. These equations are readily implemented in a computer program to find the large vector upper bound performance. The second one is to simulate the VSD directly to compute the exact decoding failure probability, which is shown to be two magnitudes lower than that of Reed-Solomon Code.