The implementation of Hamming decoder on Spartan 3

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to propose a reliable and efficient solution for detecting and correcting errors in communication channels. The implementation method of Hamming decoder is the first error correction code used in computers. We used a Spartan 3 reconfigurable circuit because this board is fully compatible with all versions of the Xilinx ISE tools, including the free WebPack. We studied linear and cyclic codes to demonstrate that its manner of implementation can be easily adapted to any structure code. For the theoretical part of this paper, we reviewed general rules used in Hamming codes' implementation. In order to create a testing platform we adapted the presented rules to be hardcoded into a Spartan 3 development board. Subsequently we presented the blueprints of our Hamming's linear decoder development. The results of our experiments revealed the benefits of using the Hamming codes for linear decoders onto a reconfigurable platform. In conclusion, our solution allows the recognition of one wrong symbol from a code sequence using either linear or cyclic Hamming codes.