Patent ID: 7162677

Claim:
An apparatus for encoding data in accordance with a fire code G(x)=P(x)(1+x C ), where P(x) is an irreducible polynomial of the degree m, wherein the value for C can be freely set within predetermined limits and changed so that a code with variable redundancy can be obtained, the apparatus is formed so that it can implement a plurality of different fire codes, the different fire codes are selected for coding of input data in dependence on a control value, to produce the code with variable redundancy, and the variable redundancy produced by the fire code is used to dynamically adapt a data rate of a source data to an available band width of a respective data channel, when the data rate of the source data varies and for the data channel only fixed rates for data rate are possible, by adding additional redundancy bits, the upper limit for C is predetermined by a maximal value and that the encoding apparatus has storage elements and modulo 2 adders whose number corresponds to a maximal number, and that switches are provided, by means of which the storage places and modulo 2 adders can connected together into an encoder according to the selected value C.