A fast algorithm to determine the burst-correcting limit of cyclic or shortened cyclic codes

A novel fast algorithm is developed for computing the burst-correcting limit of a cyclic or shortened cyclic code from the parity-check polynomial of the cyclic code. The algorithm is similar to the algorithm of H.J. Matt and J.L. Massey (1980) which, up to now, has been the most efficient method for determining the burst-correcting limit of a cyclic code, but is based on apolarity of binary forms instead of linear complexity. The running times of implementations in C of both algorithms on an IBM RISC System/6000 are compared for several binary cyclic codes of practical interest. A table of the burst-correcting limit of primitive binary BCH codes of length up to 1023 is included.<>