Redundancy Allocation of Partitioned Linear Block Codes

Abstract: Most memories suffer from both permanent defects and intermittent random errors. The partitioned linear block codes (PLBC) were proposed by Heegard to efficiently mask stuck-at defects and correct random errors. The PLBC have two separate redundancy parts for defects and random errors. In this paper, we investigate the allocation of redundancy between these two parts. The optimal redundancy allocation will be investigated using simulations and the simulation results show that the PLBC can significantly reduce the probability of decoding failure in memory with defects. In addition, we will derive the upper bound on the probability of decoding failure of PLBC and estimate the optimal redundancy allocation using this upper bound. The estimated redundancy allocation matches the optimal redundancy allocation well.