An Adaptive Forward Error Correction Method for High-Speed Optical Ethernet

摘要

With the rapid increase of Ethernet speed, it is of necessity to improve transport performance of Ethernet physical channel. Based on frame structure defined in IEEE Std 802.3, a kind of frame structure comprising forward error correction (FEC) contents is presented. A FEC method based on the frame structure is brought forward. The method includes error correction functions as well as a mechanism to detect the performance of the physical channel and adjust the FEC configuration adaptively in order to decrease the cost brought by the FEC method. An Ethernet interface using the FEC method can interwork with an ordinary non FEC Ethernet interface. Detailed analysis for performance of the FEC method is given too. A kind of network device that realizes the FEC functions is designed and a test topology is set up to test and evaluate the FEC method.