ERROR CONTROL CODING

Basic concepts
Classes of codes:
Block Codes
Linear Codes
Cyclic Codes

Convolutional Codes
1
Basic Concepts
Example: Binary Repetition Codes
(3,1) code: 0 ==> 000 1 ==> 111
Received: 011. What was transmitted?
scenario A: 111 with one error in 1st location
scenario B: 000 with two errors in 2nd & 3rd locations.
Decoding:
P(A) = (1- p)
2
p
P(B) = (1- p)

p
2
P(A) > P(B) (for p<0.5)
Decoding decision: 011 ==> 111

2
Probability of Error After Decoding
(3,1) repetition code can correct single errors.



In general for a t
c
-error correcting code:


Bit error probability = [for the (3,1) code, P
b
= P
u
]
Gain: For a BSC with p= 10
-2
, P
b
=3x10
-4
.
Cost: Expansion in bandwidth or lower rate.
3
p p p P
p p p P
C
u
2 3
3 2
) 1 ( 3 ) 1 ( 1 1
) 1 ( y probabilit error Block Undetected
3
3
2
3
= =
|
|
|
.
|

\
|
+
|
|
|
.
|

\
|
= =
i n i
t
i
C
p p P
c
i
n

=

|
|
.
|

\
|
=

) 1 (
0
u b
P P s
Hamming Distance
Def.: The Hamming distance between two codewords
c
i
and c
j
, denoted by d(c
i
,c
j
), is the number of
components at which they differ.
d
H
(011,000) = 2 d
H
[C
1
,C
2
]=W
H
(C
1
+C
2
)
d
H
(011,111) = 1
Therefore 011 is closer to 111.
Maximum Likelihood Decoding reduces to Minimum
Distance Decoding, if the priory probabilities are equal
(P(0)=P(1))

4
Geometrical Illustration
Hamming Cube


5
000
111
001
011
101
100
110
010
Error Correction and Detection
Consider a code consisting of two codewords with
Hamming distance d
min
. How many errors can be
detected? Corrected?


# of errors that can be detected = t
d
= d
min
-1
# of errors that can be corrected = t
c
=

In other words, for t-error correction, we must have
d
min
= 2t
c
+ 1

6
(
(

2
1
min
d
Error Correction and Detection
(contd)
Example: d
min
= 5



Can correct two errors
Or, detect four errors
Or, correct one error and detect two more errors.
In general
d
min
= 2t
c
+ t
d
+ 1
7
d
min
> 2t
c
+ 1
d
min
>t
c
+ t
d
+ 1


Minimum Distance of a Code
Def.: The minimum distance of a code C is the minimum
Hamming distance between any two different codewords.


A code with minimum distance d
min
can correct all error
patterns up to and including t-error patterns, where
d
min
= 2t
c
+ 1
It may be able to correct some higher error patterns, but
not all.

8
d d c c c c C
i j
i j i j min
min
( , ) =
=
and in
Example: (7,4) Code
9
No. Message Codeword No. Message Codeword
0 0000 0000000 8 0001 1010001
1 1000 1101000 9 1001 0111001
2 0100 0110100 10 0101 1100101
3 1100 1011100 11 1101 0001101
4 0010 1110010 12 0011 0100011
5 1010 0011010 13 1011 1001011
6 0110 1000110 14 0111 0010111
7 1110 0101110 15 1111 1111111
Coding: Gain and Cost (Revisited)
Given an (n,k) code.
Gain is proportional to the error correction capability,
t
c
.
Cost is proportional to the number of check digits, n-k
= r.
Given a sequence of k information digits, it is desired
to add as few check digits r as possible to correct as
many errors (t) as possible.
What is the relation between these code parameters?

Note some text books uses m rather than r for the number check bits
10
Hamming Bound
For an (n,k) code, there are 2
k
codewords and 2
n

possible received words.
Think of the 2
k
codewords as centers of spheres in an
n-dimensional space.
All received words that differ from codeword c
i
in t
c
or
less positions lie within the sphere S
i
of center c
i
and
radius t
c
.
For the code to be t
c
-error correcting (i.e. any t
c
-error
pattern for any codeword transmitted can be
corrected), all spheres S
i
, i =1,.., 2
k
, must be non-
overlapping.

11
Hamming Bound (contd)
In other words, When a codeword is selected, none of
the n-bit sequences that differ from that codeword by
t
c
or less locations can be selected as a codeword.
Consider the all-zero codeword. The number of words
that differ from this codeword by j locations is
The total number of words in any sphere (including
the codeword at the center) is

12
n
j
|
\

|
.
|

= =
|
|
.
|

\
|
=
|
|
.
|

\
|
+
c c
t
j
t
j
j
n
j
n
0 1
1
Hamming Bound (contd)
The total number of n-bit sequences that must be
available (for the code to be a t
c
-error correcting code)
is:


But the total number of sequences is 2
n
. Therefore:

13

=
|
|
.
|

\
|
c
t
j
k
j
n
0
2
( )
0
0
2 2
or, 2
c
c
t
k n
j
t
n k
j
n
j
n
j
=

=
| |
|
s
|
\ .
| |
|
s
|
\ .

Hamming Bound (contd)

The above bound is known as the Hamming Bound. It provides a
necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the construction of an
(n,k) t
c
-error correcting code.
Example: Is it theoretically possible to design a (10,7) single-error
correcting code?




A code for which the equality is satisfied is called a perfect code.
There are only three types of perfect codes (binary repetition codes, the
hamming codes, and the Golay codes).
Perfect does not mean best!

14
3
10 10
1 10 11 2 .
0 1
It is not possible.
| | | |
+ = + = >
| |
\ . \ .
Gilbert Bound
While Hamming bound sets a lower limit on the number of
redundant bits (n-k) required to correct t
c
errors in an (n,k) linear
block code.
Another lower limit is the Singleton bound

Gilbert bound places an upper bound on the number of redundant
bits required to correct t
c
errors.



It only says there exist a code but it does not tell you how to find it.



2
2
0
- log
c
t
j
n
n k
j
=
| |
| |
s
|
|
\ .
\ .

15
min
1 d r s +
The Encoding Problem
How to select 2
k
codewords of the code C from the 2
n

sequences such that some specified (or possibly the
maximum possible) minimum distance of the code is
guaranteed?
Example: How were the 16 codewords of the (7,4) code
constructed? Exhaustive search is impossible, except
for very short codes (small k and n)
Are we going to store the whole table of 2
k
(n+k)
entries?!
A constructive procedure for encoding is necessary.
16
The Decoding Problem
Standard Array
0000000 1101000 0110100 1011100 1110010 0011010 1000110 0101110 1010001 0111001 1100101 0001101 0100011 1001011 0010111 1111111
0000001 1101001 0110101 1011101 1110011 0011011 1000111 0101111 1010000 0111000 1100100 0001100 0100010 1001010 0010110 1111110
0000010 1101010 0110110 1011110 1110000 0011000 1000100 0101100 1010011 0111011 1100111 0001111 0100001 1001001 0010101 1111101
0000100 1101100 0110000 1011000 1110110 0011110 1000010 0101010 1010101 0111101 1100001 0001001 0100111 1001111 0010011 1111011
0001000 1100000 0111100 1010100 1111010 0010010 1001110 0100110 1011001 0`10001 1101101 0000101 0101011 1000011 0011111 1110111
0010000 1111000 0100100 1001100 1100010 0001010 1010110 0111110 1000001 0101001 1110101 0011101 0110011 1011011 0000111 1101111
0100000 1001000 0010100 1111100 1010010 0111010 1100110 0001110 1110001 0011001 1000101 0101101 0000011 1101011 0110111 1011111
1000000 0101000 1110100 0011100 0110010 1011010 0000110 1101110 0010001 1111001 0100101 1001101 1100011 0001011 1010111 0111111

Exhaustive decoding is impossible!!
Well-constructed decoding methods are required.
Two possible types of decoders:
1) Complete: always chooses minimum distance
2) Bounded-distance: chooses the minimum distance up
to a certain t
c
. Error detection is utilized otherwise.
17