Accelerated processing for maximum distance separable codes using composite extension fields

This paper describes a new design of Reed-Solomon (RS) codes when using composite extension fields. Our ultimate goal is to provide codes that remain Maximum Distance Separable (MDS), but that can be processed at higher speeds in the encoder and decoder. This is possible by using coefficients in the generator matrix that belong to smaller (and faster) finite fields of the composite extension and limiting the use of the larger (and slower) finite fields to a minimum. We provide formulae and an algorithm to generate such constructions starting from a Vandermonde RS generator matrix and show that even the simplest constructions, e.g., using only processing in two finite fields, can speed up processing by as much as two-fold compared to a Vandermonde RS and Cauchy RS while using the same decoding algorithm, and more than two-fold compared to other RS Cauchy and FFT-based RS.