Estimates of error rates for codes on burst-noise channels

The error structure on communication channels used for data transmission may be so complex as to preclude the feasibility of accurately predicting the performance of given codes when employed on these channels. Use of an approximate error rate as an estimate of performance allows the complex statistics of errors to be reduced to a manageable table of parameters and used in an economical evaluation of large collections of error detecting codes. Exemplary evaluations of error detecting codes on the switched telephone network are included in this paper. On channels which may be represented by Gilbert's model of a burst-noise channel, the probabilities of error or of retransmission may be calculated without approximations for both error correcting and error detecting codes