Reliable communication over channels with insertions, deletions, and substitutions

Abstract

A new block code is introduced which is capable of correcting multiple insertion, deletion, and substitution errors. The code consists of nonlinear inner codes, which we call watermark codes, concatenated with low-density parity-check codes over nonbinary fields. The inner code allows probabilistic resynchronization and provides soft outputs for the outer decoder, which then completes decoding. We present codes of rate 0.7 and transmitted length 5000 bits that can correct 30 insertion/deletion errors per block. We also present codes of rate 3/14 and length 4600 bits that can correct 450 insertion/deletion errors per block.