AN 846: Intel® Stratix® 10 Forward Error Correction

ID 683805
Date 7/02/2018
Public
Document Table of Contents

2.3.1. FEC Definitions

FEC is an error correction coding method. There are many types of FEC, including:
  • Reed Solomon
  • Bose-Chadhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH)
  • Concatenated codes

The type you select depends on:

  • The overhead your design permits
  • Burst handling capability
  • Gain versus complexity (number of gates, memory, power, and so on)
  • Latency considerations

There are bit error and burst limits to each code. FEC complexity increases non-linearly as you approach the Shannon limit. The Shannon limit, sometimes called Shannon's theorem, establishes that for any given degree of noise contamination of a communication channel, it is possible to communicate discrete data (digital information) nearly error-free up to a computable maximum rate through the channel.

FEC allows detection and correction of X bits or symbols in a block. There are limits to its correcting capability.

Table 3.  FEC Parameters
Code Type Parameter Description
Binary n = block length
k = message length
Non-binary (RS-FEC, for example) n = block length
k = message length
t = correctable symbols (n-k)/2
m = symbol size