ECC performance of interleaved RS codes with burst errors

In this paper, we describe a computationally efficient way of calculating the probability of decoding error when a Reed Solomon code is utilized to record data over a channel that produces correlated symbol errors. We assume that the channel errors can be described by a Markovian model with a small number of states. A simple modification of the transition probability matrix for this Markov model allows one to compute (using a desk top computer with readily available software) the performance of these codes with and without interleaving. Examples are given illustrating the efficacy of this technique.