On the Error Rate of Binary BCH Codes under Error-and-erasure Decoding

Abstract: Determining the exact decoding error probability of linear block codes is an interesting problem. For binary BCH codes, McEliece derived methods to estimate the error probability of a simple bounded distance decoding (BDD) for BCH codes. However, BDD falls short in many applications. In this work, we consider error-and-erasure decoding and its variants that improve upon BDD. We derive closed-form expressions for their error probabilities and validate them through simulations. Then, we illustrate their use in assessing concatenated coding schemes.