Method and apparatus for generating, recording and transmitting an error product code block having an improved check code arrangement

摘要

There is provided a method of processing data for generating an error correction product code block devised so as to maintain the current level of redundancy after the error correcting ability is modified as a result of advancement of simiconductor and data recording/transmission technologies. Unlike any known technique of configuring a Reed-Solomon error correcting product code block of (M+P0). times.(N+PI) bytes for an information data of (M×N) bytes, an error correcting product code block data structure is obtained by configuring a (K×(M+1)×(N+ P))-byte Reed-Solomon error correcting product code block for (K×M. times.N)-byte data, making K variable to consequently make the entire size of the Reed-Solomon error correcting product code block variable. At the same time, the error correcting ability varies in proportion to the value of K without increasing redundancy.