Enhanced decoding of interleaved error correcting codes

A common way to deal with bursts in data storage systems is to interleave byte-error correcting codes. In the decoding of each of these byte-error correcting codes, one normally does not make use of the information obtained from the previous or subsequent code, while the bursty character of the channel indicates a dependency. Berlekamp and Tong (1985) exploited such a dependency to enhance the decoding performance. Here a different, but similar approach is proposed.