Abstract: Signal sources provide frames (302-303) to a comparator (206). For each frame, codeword error statuses for each of the codewords and a frame error status (313-314) are determined. Codeword error statuses are provided for priority sets of codewords (306, 308) and are not provided for non-priority sets of codewords (311, 312). The codeword error statuses for members of the priority set of codewords for each frame are compared, wherein the members have substantially identical codeword identifications. Selected priority codewords are produced by selecting members of the priority sets having favorable codeword statuses. Furthermore, the frame error statuses for each frame are also compared. Selected non-priority codewords are produced by selecting the non-priority set of codewords corresponding to a favorable frame error status. The selected priority codewords and the selected non-priority codewords are then provided as the favorable signal representation (304).

Abstract: Within a fixed infrastructure of a communication system, message portions of code words that are found to be uncorrectable (erasures) are transmitted with a predetermined number of bits in place of the parity portion associated with those code words. These predetermined number of bits indicate the existence of the erasures, which can be reproduced for continued transmission to the final destination. By having the number of predetermined bits being less than the number of parity bits, the bandwidth requirement for wireline communication paths is reduced.