Performance study on the suitability of Reed Solomon Codes in WiMAX

Error control codes are used to protect information from errors that can occur during transmission. Reed Solomon (RS) code is one of the most important and best known classes of nonbinary Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenqhen (BCH) codes which are capable of correcting burst errors (C. Xu, 2007)[2]. RS code is a type of forward error correction (FEC) codes used in data transmission for real time applications. RS codes are proven to be effective in transmitting data in wireless channels. WiMAX, the worldwide interoperability for microwave access, is a telecommunication technology based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, which is also called wireless MAN. This paper presents a complete specification of the Reed Solomon encoding and decoding algorithms with its implementations. The goal of this paper is to study and analyze the suitability of Reed Solomon code for WiMAX.

I. INTRODUCTION

Broadband wireless is all about bringing the broadband experience to a wireless context, which offers users with certain unique benefits and also convenience. In this, mobile broadband offers the additional functionality of portability, nomadic city and mobility. Mobile broadband attempts to provide broadband applications to the end user with new experience scenarios which can offer a very different value proposition. And hence, WiMAX (Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access) described in IEEE 802.16 Wireless Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) standard is designed to accommodate both fixed and mobile broadband applications (Rober, 2008)[1].