US Patent 7487429 Simple decoding method and apparatus

A method of decoding possibly mutilated codewords (r) of a code (C) into information words (m′) including information symbols (m′1, m′2, . . . , m′k), the information words (m) being encoded into codewords (c) of the code (C). In order not to considerably deviate from the standard method and apparatus for decoding a standard Reed-Solomon code, a method of decoding is proposed including decoding the possibly mutilated codewords (r) into codewords (r′), reconstructing information symbols (m′1, m′2, . . . , m′k) from the codewords (r′), comparing the reconstruct information symbols (m′1, m′2, . . . , m′k) with information symbols (m1) known a priori before decoding, and verifying decoding errors based on the result of the comparison.