Multiple-Symbol Interleaved RS Codes and Two-Pass Decoding Algorithm

For communication systems with heavy burst noise, an optimal Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme is expected to have a large burst error correction capacity while simultaneously owning moderate random error correction capability. This letter presents a new FEC scheme based on multiple-symbol interleaved Reed-Solomon codes and an associated two-pass decoding algorithm. It is shown that the proposed multi-symbol interleaved coding scheme can achieve nearly twice as much as the burst error correction capability of conventional symbol-interleaved Reed-Solomon codes with the same code length and code rate.