FEC - Where are the experimenters ?

[Steven Wilson <randyw@crl.com>]

FEC: Forward Error Correction

FEC ? Where have all of the experimenters gone ?  Several weeks
ago Phil Karn upload some truly revolutionary software (source)
to all the various digital codes to be received  under poor or
impossible conditions and still allow 100 % decoded copy.  The
programs he upload are simulations and even add noise to the
data to force the ole computer to do a little work in cleaning it
up.  Even tho it is simulation include in the code is the encoder
and decoder.

The programs need a couple of things to make them more useful to
ham radio.  Especially we non-programmers and MS-DOS types.

1)  They need compilied to run on MS-DOS systems (386 or better)
    and a .exe file made available.  Or the changes need to make
    it compile under Borland 3.0 , etc. need to be posted by one
    of you programmer types.  Any takers ?

2)  Once the simulation program runs on a MS-DOS (yes they are
    still a lot of those in tcp/ip and packet not everyone is
    running Linux and TNOS (yet)) the program needs a driver to
    allow interfacing with the real world (our TNC's, etc).  In
    order to do this the noise generator needs to be removed
    from the software and the driver written for using a COM
    port to get the data into and out of the MS-DOS machine. No
     the obsolute Z-80 code of the TNC-2 does not have to be
    changed.  We hardware types can cut circuit lines to remove
    and add back the data stream to the TNC.

FEC is a digital correction system so it can be applied to any
data stream.

Why is FEC being overlooked by the 'ham community' ?

One man's comments.  de stan AK0B

e-mail and flames via randyw@crl.com