A New Class of Single Burst Error Correcting Codes with Parallel Decoding

With technology scaling, burst errors or clustered errors are becoming increasingly common in different types of memories. Multiple bit upsets due to particle strikes, write disturbance errors, and magnetic field coupling are a few of the mechanisms which cause clustered errors. In this article, a new class of single burst error correcting codes are presented which correct a single burst of any size b within a codeword. A code construction methodology is presented which enables us to construct the proposed scheme from existing codes, e.g., Hamming codes. A new single step decoding methodology for the proposed class of codes is also presented which enables faster decoding. Different code constructions using Hamming codes, and BCH codes have been presented in this paper and a comparison is made with existing schemes in terms of decoding complexity and data redundancy. The proposed scheme in all cases reduces the decoder complexity for little to no increase in data redundancy, specifically for higher burst error sizes.