When Can Interleaving Be Avoided for Reed-Solomon Coded Binary Markov Channels?

The performance of Reed-Solomon codes over the binary additive Markov noise channel (BAMNC) is analyzed. A recursive expression for the probability of m error symbols in a block of n symbols is derived using the generating series approach, thus facilitating the exact calculation of the probability of codeword error under bounded distance decoding. An approximation to this probability is obtained, and it is shown to be tight when the noise correlation is not very large. In this case, interleaving the channel at the symbol level can be avoided. Furthermore, a wide range of channel conditions, under which channel interleaving at the bit level can be avoided, is identified.