A comparison of VLSI architectures for time and transform domain decoding of Reed-Solomon codes

It is well known that the Euclidean algorithm or its equivalent, continued fractions, can be used to find the error locator polynomial needed to decode a Reed-Solomon (RS) code. It is shown that this algorithm can be used for both time and transform domain decoding by replacing its initial conditions with the Forney syndromes and the erasure locator polynomial. By this means both the errata locator polynomial and the errate evaluator polynomial can be obtained with the Euclidean algorithm. With these ideas, both time and transform domain Reed-Solomon decoders for correcting errors and erasures are simplified and compared. As a consequence, the architectures of Reed-Solomon decoders for correcting both errors and erasures can be made more modular, regular, simple, and naturally suitable for VLSI implementation