Error Control Coding

This chapter presents a summary of the underlying error control coding principles in order to better describe the coding methods used in broadband telecommunications systems. Modulo‐2 operation facilitates the measurement of an important metric in error control coding, the codeword distance, defined as the number of places two codewords differ. Most error correction coding techniques, also known as forward error correction (FEC) codes of interest to broadband telecommunications are based on modulo‐2 binary arithmetic and generator polynomial. Two classes of error correction codes exist, block codes and convolutional codes, and both classes can perform near capacity limits as derived from the Shannon theorem. The chapter illustrates the point that error control coding techniques create mathematical relationships between data bits and parity bits to enable the receiver to detect/correct reception errors.