Performance of Hermitian codes using combined error and erasure decoding

The authors have previously implemented a hard-decision decoder and have shown with simulation results that Hermitian codes perform well over the AWGN and Rayleigh fading channel, owing to their large code lengths. However, further increases in coding gain can be achieved by using a combined error and erasure decoding algorithm instead. In the paper a combined error and erasure decoding algorithm for Hermitian codes is implemented and simulation results over the AWGN and Rayleigh fading channel for the (64, 49, 10), (64, 44, 15) and (512, 314, 171) Hermitian codes are presented. The results show only a small increase in performance over the AWGN channel but more significant coding gains can be achieved over a Rayleigh fading channel.