Improved performance of Reed-Solomon decoding with the use of pilot signals for erasure generation

The performance of a Reed-Solomon (RS) decoder can be improved by allowing errors and erasures (E&E) decoding if each error location is correctly identified, or "flagged", and considered as an erasure. However, in order to be effective, it is imperative that the erasure flagging is accurate. We propose the use of pilot signals in a new method for flagging erasures. A Bayesian method for optimum character erasure flagging is derived which uses both the received data signals and the channel estimates provided by pilot signals, and a simpler method is presented which flags erasures on a modulation symbol basis. Our simulation results demonstrate that combining pilot signals with E&E decoding results in significant transmit power savings.