Synchronizing block codes with a decoder for variable-length codes

Abstract

It is well known that any two non-identical codewords from a fixed-length code must belong to different non- periodic equivalence classes under cyclic shift for the code to have a bounded synchronization delay (BSD). Subsets of fixed- length codewords from T-codes, a family of variable-length codes (VLCs) known for strong statistical self-synchronization and a well-explained synchronization model, also follow this rule, albeit with some periodic exceptions. This paper shows how the T-code construction algorithm may be used for the simple construction of maximal block codes with bounded synchronization delay. These self-synchronizing codes are subsets of T-codes and thus resynchronization under decoding with a T-code decoder is both automatic and detectable.