Successive iterative decoding of Reed Solomon codes using cryptographic hash codes as parity

Coding theory and Cryptography have common roots. Both the fields were introduced by Claude Shannon in his legendary work. The applications of both the fields are however quite different and therefore not significant research work has previously been done to investigate the connection between the both. In this work, those applications that require security in the form of cryptographic hash codes are considered and this cryptographic hash code is used as a means to improve the decoding results of concatenated Convolutional/Reed Solomon codes. Using the message digest, the results of concatenated decoding are enhanced and vice versa i.e. using the concatenated codes, the errors in the message digest are minimized. It is also demonstrated that a coding gain is achieved in both the cases.