BCH Codes—Nonbinary And Reed‐Solomon*

Abstract The description of nonbinary BCH codes closely follows the presentation for binary BCH codes in the preceding article. Nonbinary BCH codes are described as cyclic codes whose generator polynomials have particular sequences of roots. Reed Solomon codes are defined as nonbinary BCH codes whose symbol and locator fields are the same. Efficient encoding and decoding algorithms are described for hard‐decision and errors‐and‐erasures decoding. More general soft‐decision decoding schemes are discussed.