Code design and decoding methods for burst error locating codes

Error locating code, a class of error control codes, can indicate the location of the error and is useful to fault diagnosis in computer systems and reduction of the retransmission cost in communication systems. The authors proposed two types of burst error locating codes called B₁EL codes and SEC-B₁EL codes. Since single-hit errors are more probable than burst errors, the latter codes having single-bit error correction capability are practical. However, the code length of the existing SEC-B₁EL code is not long. This paper proposes efficient SEC-B₁EL codes having longer code length. The proposed code is obtained from a parity check matrix of burst error connecting codes. The number of the frames in the proposed SEC-B₁EL codes increases as the codelength increases, while that in the existing SEC-B₁EL codes infixed. This also proposes both parallel and serial decoding methods of the proposed code in order to apply this code to both computer and communication systems. The parallel decoder is implemented by hardware description language and its circuit area is evaluated. Code evaluation says that the code length of the proposed code is about 1.1 times as long as that of the existing code and that decoder circuit area of the proposed code is 20 to 40 percent of that of burst error correcting Fire code.