Binary Weight Distributions of Low Rate Reed-Solomon Codes.
CHARLES T. RETTER · 1995
Abstract : This report summarizes the results of a study of the binary weight distributions of low rate Reed-Solomon error-correcting codes. It includes a review of the fundamental properties of Galois fields, Reed-Solomon codes, and weight distributions. Because the binary weight distribution is a good indication of the binary error-correcting capabilities of a code, computation of binary weight distributions makes it possible to select the best codes for binary channels and to estimate their true error-correcting capabilities. During the study, the weight distributions of 3,046 codes containing almost 50 trillion code words were computed. This report contains graphs of the distributions and tables of the minimum distances of all these codes. It also compares the results with previously known bounds. (AN)