Hawkynt

Fire Code

Burst error correction code using cyclic polynomial structure. Can correct single burst errors up to length b. Generator polynomial G(x) = (x^c + 1)p(x) where p(x) is irreducible. Used in IEEE 802.3 Ethernet.

Properties

Property	Value
Category	Error Correction
Sub-category	Cyclic Code
Security status	🎓 Educational Only
Complexity	Advanced
Inventor	Philip Fire
Year	1959
Origin	🇺🇸 United States
Source	algorithms/ecc/fire-code.js

Security

Status: 🎓 Educational Only

Known vulnerabilities

Issue	Description	Mitigation
Limited Burst Length	Can only correct bursts up to specified length. Longer bursts will be miscorrected.	—
Complex Decoding	Syndrome computation and error location require polynomial arithmetic over GF(2).	—

Documentation

• Wikipedia - Burst Error Correction
• Fire Code Paper
• IEEE 802.3ap Fire Code

References

• Burst Error Correction Patent
• NASA Technical Report

Test vectors

2 vectors ship with this algorithm and run in the test suite. Byte values are hexadecimal.

Vector 1 — Fire code all zeros

Field	Value
burstLength	3
c	5
input	0000000000000000
expected	000000000000000000000000000000

Vector 2 — Fire code simple pattern

Field	Value
burstLength	3
c	5
input	0100010001000100
expected	010001000100010001000100010001

---

← All algorithms

This site is open source. Improve this page.