A self checking Reed Solomon encoder: design and analysis

Reed Solomon codes are widely used to identify and correct data errors in transmission and storage systems. Due to the vital importance of these blocks, a very important research topic is the study of the effects of faults on their behavior. The presented architecture exploits some properties of the arithmetic operations on GF(2/sup n/) Galois field, related to the parity of the binary representation of the elements of the field. The encoder has been mapped on an SRAM based FPGA, the self-checking property has been analyzed using a SEU fault model and the performances in terms of area and delay overhead are presented.