Article on forward error correction (FEC)

[g8gtz]

This is a very good article by Paul Nicholson on FEC (as used by DVB-S and other coding schemes) - to quote his email to the RSGB LF group:

I wrote a non-mathematical introductory article about how
forward error correction works.

There's a lot of material on the web about FEC but most
of it is very technical and tends to concentrate on one or
another particular coding scheme. I couldn't find anything
that demonstrates and really explains in simple terms the
essential principle of it.

So I thought I'd try to write something, perhaps to see if
I can understand it myself.

The article should appeal to anyone who's wondered how 'coding'
a message, which increases its bandwidth and reduces its S/N,
can actually lead to greatly improved communications.

http://abelian.org/fec/pn161218/
or in pdf format
http://abelian.org/fec/pn161218.pdf

Whether I've succeeded or not, the reader will have to judge.
--
Paul Nicholson