A family of efficient burst-correcting array codes

A family of binary burst correcting array codes that are defined as follows is discussed: consider an n₁×n n₂ array with n₁=4u+ν+2 and n₂=6u+2ν+5, u⩾1, ν⩾0, ν≠1 where each row and column has even parity. The bits are read diagonally starting from the upper-left corner. The columns are viewed cyclically, i.e. the array is a cylinder. If one diagonal has been read out, one proceeds with the second diagonal preceding it. It is proven that the codes of this type can correct any burst of length up to n₁. The burst-correcting efficiency of this family tends to 4/5 as u→∞. As a comparison, the burst-correcting efficiency of other families of array codes tends to 2/3; the same is true for Fire codes. A simple decoding algorithm for the codes is also presented