Unequal error protection codes derived from SEC‐DED codes. Issue 8 (1st April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Reviriego, Pedro; Liu, Shan Shan; Sánchez‐Macián, Alfonso; Xiao, Liyi; Maestro, Juan Antonio
• Is Part Of: Electronics letters. Volume 52:Issue 8(2016)
• Page Start: 619
• Page End: 620
• Publication Date: 2016-04-01
• Subjects: error correction codes -- error detection codes; unequal error protection codes -- SEC‐DED codes -- error correction codes -- single error correction double error detection codes -- UEP codes -- decoding complexity -- encoding complexity -- signal processing systems -- multimedia system; Electronics -- Periodicals; 621.381
• DOI: 10.1049/el.2016.0077
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0013-5194

Abstract

Abstract : Error correction codes are commonly used to protect the data stored in memories from errors. Among the codes used, single error correction double error detection (SEC‐DED) codes are probably the most common due to their simplicity. In some applications, the importance of the bits is different, being some of them critical while others can tolerate some errors. This is the case, for example, in some multimedia and signal processing systems. For those applications, unequal error protection (UEP) codes that provide different protection for different bits can be used. In many cases, the bits that require extra protection are only a few. Therefore, it would be convenient to use a traditional code extended to provide additional protection for a few bits. A simple method to derive UEP codes from SEC‐DED codes is presented. The proposed UEP codes protect a few bits against double errors and behave as SEC‐DED codes for the rest. Encoding and decoding complexity is only slightly larger than that of an SEC‐DED code and the implementation is a simple modification of the SEC‐DED implementation.