Patent ID: 8751910

Claim:
A Forward Error Correction (FEC) encoding method of an encoding apparatus comprising a mapper and a FEC encoder operatively coupled to the mapper, the method comprising: mapping a stream of data symbols to data symbol positions in a sequence of two-dimensional symbol blocks B i , i a positive integer, each of the symbol blocks comprising data symbol positions and coding symbol positions; and computing coding symbols for the coding symbol positions in each symbol block in the sequence, the coding symbols being computed such that, for each symbol block B i that has a preceding symbol block B i−1 and a subsequent symbol block B i+1 in the sequence, a two-block concatenation of symbols at symbol positions along one dimension of the preceding symbol block B i−1 , concatenated with the symbols along the other dimension in the symbol block B i , forms a codeword of a FEC component code, and a two-block concatenation of symbols at symbol positions along the one dimension of the symbol block B i , concatenated with the symbols along the other dimension in the subsequent symbol block B i+1 , forms a codeword of the FEC component code, wherein each symbol block comprises an n row by m column array of symbols, m, n≧1, n>m, the computing comprising: computing the coding symbols for the coding symbol positions in each symbol block B i based on D i−1 and B i , where D i−1 is a matrix formed by adding (n−m) sets of n predetermined symbols along the one dimension of B i−1 .