Performance evaluation of partial erasure decoding for non-binary block codes

The concept of partial erasure decoding for a non-binary block code is introduced. The upper bound of the decoding error probability for partial erasure decoding is derived. Numerical results using Reed-Solomon (RS) codes are presented with a comparison of the full erasure decoding performance. For a RS code of length 7 or 15, the partial erasure decoding upper bound has a 1 to 3 dB advantage in the signal to noise ratio (E_b/N₀) over the standard RS decoding scheme when BPSK is used with the optimum erasure zone (θ). These results show that partial erasure decoding is very promising if a practical algorithm can be found