What Is Forward Error Correction (FEC)?

Imagine you're filling a bucket with water. You could put the bucket under a spigot and pour water until it rims over, but that would be a poor strategy. It's better to hold on to the handle and wait for the bucket to fill with water on its own--that way, if there's a hole in the bottom, you'll only lose a small amount of water. Forward Error Correction (FEC) is like that spigot: while it doesn't eliminate errors, it protects against them so you can recover more data from damaged packets. FEC is like a digital signal processing technique that enhances data reliability and introduces redundant data, called error-correcting code (ECC), before transmission or storage. FEC allows the receiver to correct errors without a reverse channel; therefore, with forwarding error correction, the receiver doesn't have to request data retransmission. FEC, short for forwarding error correction, is a method adopted to obtain error control in data transmission where the transmitter sends redundant data. The receiver recognizes only a portion of the data without apparent errors. It allows broadcasting data to be shipped and works on the principle that at least one out of many random numbers sent will be perceived successfully by the receiver. Making them hard to change without being detected. FEC codes are generally used for correcting bit errors in one-to-one communication systems. The number of missing bits that can benefit is determined by the code design and the strength of the encoding mechanism employed. So the Two critical categories of FEC codes are convolutional codes and block codes. These Block codes work on fixed-size packets of bits where the partial code blocks are decoded in polynomial time to the block length. Convolutional codes deal with the streams of arbitrary length hand resolved using a Viterbi algorithm.