In shortened codes information symbols are deleted to obtain a desired blocklength smaller than the design blocklength.
2.
If the dropped symbols are not check symbols then this cyclic code is also a shortened code.
3.
To convert ( n, k ) cyclic code to ( n-b, k-b ) shortened code, set b symbols to zero and drop them from each codeword.
4.
Before delving into the details of cyclic codes first we will discuss quasi-cyclic and shortened codes which are closely related to the cyclic codes and they all can be converted into each other.
5.
The " missing " bits in a shortened code need to be filled by either zeros or ones, depending on whether the data is complemented or not . ( To put it another way, if the symbols are inverted, then the zero-fill needs to be inverted to a one-fill . ) For this reason it is mandatory that the sense of the data ( i . e ., true or complemented ) be resolved before Reed Solomon decoding.