I am interested on the analysis of the Reed-Solomon capabilities for detection (detection only, when correction is not possible), in particular for RS(10,8), with symbol 8 bits, 10 symbols total in a codeword, out of which 8 are for data and 2 for ECC. In this case the Reed-Solomon code should be able to correct 1 symbol with multiple errors, but in the literature I don't find much information on the error detection capability (with no correction), for example with 2 errors in 2 different symbols the RS should be able to detect but not correct.
I would like to do some Montecarlo analysis in Python, I have found this package for Reed-Solomon: https://pypi.org/project/unireedsolomon/
the python package allows me to create the RS code, inject error and decode with correction, but it does not seem to provide detection capability, I tried to inject 2 errors in two different symbol and I get a miss-correction, I believe that in this case the Reed-Solomon should be able to report an error that cannot be corrected. The unireedsolomon package does not seem to have implemented such detection capability, or maybe I am wrong. Do you know if such capability exist in the unireedsolomon package?
Or do you have suggestions on how I can run such detection only analysis maybe with a different python package? Or any comment about the detection in the Reed-Solomon code would be useful too. Thank you
The Reed-Solomon code RS(10,8) has d_min = n-k+1 = 3 minimum distance. A code with minimum distance d_min can correct t = floor((d_min-1) / 2) symbol errors or detect d_min-1 symbol errors. So the code you described can detect 2 symbol errors.
The algebraic structure of the code ensures that all valid codewords with d_min-1 or fewer errors will result in a syndrome not equal to zero (which is the indicator there are errors).
I created a Python package galois that extends NumPy arrays over Galois fields. Since algebraic FEC codes are closely related, I included them as well. Reed-Solomon codes are implemented, as well as a detect() method.
Here is an example of the RS(10,8) code using galois. In my library, shortened codes RS(n-s,k-s) are used by first creating the full code RS(n,k) and then passing k-s message symbols into encode() or n-s symbols into decode() or detect().
In [1]: import galois
# Create the full code over GF(2^8) with d_min=3
In [2]: rs = galois.ReedSolomon(255, 253); rs
Out[2]: <Reed-Solomon Code: [255, 253, 3] over GF(2^8)>
# The Galois field the symbols are in
In [3]: GF = rs.field
In [4]: print(GF.properties)
GF(2^8):
characteristic: 2
degree: 8
order: 256
irreducible_poly: x^8 + x^4 + x^3 + x^2 + 1
is_primitive_poly: True
primitive_element: x
# Create a shortened message with 8 symbols
In [6]: message = GF.Zeros(8); message
Out[6]: GF([0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], order=2^8)
# Encode the message into a codeword with 10 symbols
In [7]: codeword = rs.encode(message); codeword
Out[7]: GF([0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], order=2^8)
# Corrupt the first 2 symbols
In [8]: codeword[0:2] = [123, 234]; codeword
Out[8]: GF([123, 234, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], order=2^8)
# Decode the corrupted codeword, the corrected errors are -1 (meaning could not correctly decode)
In [9]: rs.decode(codeword, errors=True)
Out[9]: (GF([123, 234, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], order=2^8), -1)
# However, the RS code can correctly detect there are <= 2 errors
In [10]: rs.detect(codeword)
Out[10]: True