Agile encoder architectures for strength-adaptive long BCH codes

Long Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes are the choice of error correction codes for FLASH memory applications. Quite often, for FLASH memory applications, to cope with variations in noise mechanisms, the packet length and the error correction capability of the code needs to be changed (strength adaptive BCH code). In this paper, we present a linear feedback shift register (LFSR) based architecture with a critical path bounded by logN (where N is the length of the codeword), independent of the strength of the code and without any penalty in latency at a reasonable additional cost. The differentiating feature of the proposed architecture is the agility at which the strength can be changed at a very competitive cost.