Bounds on the bit error probability of a linear cyclic code over GF(2/sup l/) and its extended code

An upper bound on the bit-error probability (BEP) of a linear cyclic code over GF(2/sup l/) with hard-decision (HD) maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding on memoryless symmetric channels is derived. Performance results are presented for Reed-Solomon codes on GF(32), GF(64), and GF