Combined framing and FEC coding for digital multiplex signals

A combined framing and error control scheme is proposed for the DS3 signal by replacing the F-bits with FEC parity check bits. A suitable extended and shortened Hamming code is used. A fast syndrome computation scheme is developed for the DS3-FEC code with distributed parity check bits to facilitate faster reframe times. The proposed scheme has a better overall framing performance than that of F-bit framing. It also offers the output BER reduction to approximately 1360 P/sub e//sup 2/.<>