BITWISE RELIABILITY INDICATORS FROM SURVIVOR BITS IN VITERBI DECODERS

Various embodiments relate to the production of erasure flags to indicate errors resulting from decoding of convolutional codes. A Viterbi decoder may use a register exchange method to produce a plurality of survivor codes. At a defined index, a majority vote may take place comparing values of bits in each of the survivor codes. This majority vote may involve obtaining both the quantity of high-order bits and the quantity of low-order bits and obtaining the difference of the two quantities. The absolute value of the difference of high-order bits to low-order bits may be compared to a defined threshold. When the absolute value difference is below the defined quantity, an erasure flag may be produced and associated with the bits of the defined index, indicating that they are eligible for erasure. In some embodiments, a Reed-Solomon decoder may use the erasure flag to target specific survivor bits or survivor bytes for error-correction through erasure.