Error correcting codes | Communications Workgroup | Forum

A few quick finds on approprite choices of ECC for space communications.

From the Wikipedia article on Forward Error Correction:

Concatenated codes have been standard practice in satellite and deep space communications since Voyager 2 first used the technique in its 1986 encounter with Uranus.

It seems like concatenated codes are the traditional workhorse of space telecomms.

However, there are more modern challengers to this position.  From the article on Turbo Codes:

Turbo codes are finding use in (deep space) satellite communications and other applications where designers seek to achieve reliable information transfer over bandwidth or latency constrained communication links in the presence of data-corrupting noise.

But also from that article:

Turbo codes are nowadays competing with LDPC codes, which provide similar performance.

I guess it will largely come down to what we can find open source software for.