Abstract
In our previous work we introduced a method for
avoiding/excluding some symbols in Reed-Solomon (RS) codes,
called symbol avoidance. In this paper, we apply the symbol
avoidance method to make synchronization of RS encoded data
more effective. We avoid symbols in a RS code and then perform
conventional frame synchronization on RS encoded data by
appending sync-words on the data. The symbols in the RS code
are avoided according to the sync-word used, such that the
sync-word has very low probability of being found in the RS
codewords, where it was not inserted. Therefore, for different
sync-words, different symbols need to be avoided in the RS code.
The goal here is to reduce the probability of mistaking data
for the sync-word in the RS encoded framed data. Hence, the
probability of successful synchronization is improved. Not only
does our symbol avoidance code improve probability of successful
synchronization, it also reduces the overall amount of redundancy
required when the channel is very noisy.