Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!mike
From: mike@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Mike Tankenson)
Newsgroups: comp.dsp
Subject: Re: Reed Solomon Decoders
Message-ID: <7771@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 13 Apr 90 20:58:27 GMT
References: <7740@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <12707@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com>
Reply-To: mike@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Mike Tankenson)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 31

In article <12707@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com> hbg6@citek.UUCP (John Schuch) writes:

>What, pray tell, is a reed solomon decoder?

Irv Reed and Gus Solomon were at MIT in 1960 and came up with the error
correction scheme, based on some early work by Shannon.  I'm no expert in
the decoder world, so some of this is greek to me.  Suffice to say that RS
techniques have been in use at JPL for a long long time.  Voyager is how
many millions of miles away.  It currently has the power of a dim light
bulb, but still sends back RS encoded data (images) that are terrific.

toms@ncifcrf.gov describes a great article on RS technology:

>I don't have a direct answer, but perhaps a lead for you.  McEliece, a
>professor at CalTech wrote a nice paper that had a clear description
>of how such codes work:

>@article{McEliece1989,
>author = "R. J. McEliece",
>title = "Safety in Numbers: Protecting Data Mathemagically",
>journal = "California Institute of Technology, Engineering \& Science",
>volume = "LII",
>number = "4",
>pages = "26-36",
>year = "1989"}

-- 
Mike Tankenson                              Telos/Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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