Forward Error Correction for Storage Media: An Overview

Abstract

As the adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in production and service rendering sectors increases, the demand for digital data storage with large storage capacity also increases. Higher storage media systems reliability and fault tolerance are among the key factors that the existing systems sometimes fail to meet and therefore, resulting into data loss. Forward error correction is one of the techniques applied to reduce the impact of data loss problem in digital data storage. This paper presents a survey conducted in different digital data storage companies in Dar es Salam, Tanzania. Data were collected and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Secondary data were captured from user and manufacturer technical reports. It was revealed that data loss is still a predominant challenge in the digital data storage industry. Therefore, the study proposes the new storage media FEC model using locked convolutional encoder with the enhanced NTCViterbi decoder.