Plan I. Introduction

Example[edit]
Transmission without interleaving:
Error-free message: aaaabbbbccccddddeeeeffffgggg
Transmission with a burst error: aaaabbbbccc____deeeeffffgggg
Here, each group of the same letter represents a 4-bit one-bit error-correcting codeword. The codeword cccc is altered in one bit and can be corrected, but the codeword dddd is altered in three bits, so either it cannot be decoded at all or it might be decoded incorrectly.
With interleaving:
Error-free code words: aaaabbbbccccddddeeeeffffgggg
Interleaved: abcdefgabcdefgabcdefgabcdefg
Transmission with a burst error: abcdefgabcd____bcdefgabcdefg
Received code words after deinterleaving: aa_abbbbccccdddde_eef_ffg_gg
In each of the codewords "aaaa", "eeee", "ffff", and "gggg", only one bit is altered, so one-bit error-correcting code will decode everything correctly.
Transmission without interleaving:
Original transmitted sentence: ThisIsAnExampleOfInterleaving
Received sentence with a burst error: ThisIs______pleOfInterleaving
The term "AnExample" ends up mostly unintelligible and difficult to correct.
With interleaving:
Transmitted sentence: ThisIsAnExampleOfInterleaving...
Error-free transmission: TIEpfeaghsxlIrv.iAaenli.snmOten.
Received sentence with a burst error: TIEpfe______Irv.iAaenli.snmOten.
Received sentence after deinterleaving: T_isI_AnE_amp_eOfInterle_vin_...
No word is completely lost and the missing letters can be recovered with minimal guesswork.
Disadvantages of interleaving[edit]
Use of interleaving techniques increases total delay. This is because the entire interleaved block must be received before the packets can be decoded.^[22] Also interleavers hide the structure of errors; without an interleaver, more advanced decoding algorithms can take advantage of the error structure and achieve more reliable communication than a simpler decoder combined with an interleaver^{[citation needed]}. An example of such an algorithm is based on neural network^[23] structures.
Software for error-correcting codes[edit]
Simulating the behaviour of error-correcting codes (ECCs) in software is a common practice to design, validate and improve ECCs. The upcoming wireless 5G standard raises a new range of applications for the software ECCs: the Cloud Radio Access Networks (C-RAN) in a Software-defined radio (SDR) context. The idea is to directly use software ECCs in the communications. For instance in the 5G, the software ECCs could be located in the cloud and the antennas connected to this computing resources: improving this way the flexibility of the communication network and eventually increasing the energy efficiency of the system.
In this context, there are various available Open-source software listed below (non exhaustive).

• 
  AFF3CT(A Fast Forward Error Correction Toolbox): a full communication chain in C++ (many supported codes like Turbo, LDPC, Polar codes, etc.), very fast and specialized on channel coding (can be used as a program for simulations or as a library for the SDR).
  
• 
  IT++: a C++ library of classes and functions for linear algebra, numerical optimization, signal processing, communications, and statistics.
  
• 
  OpenAir: implementation (in C) of the 3GPP specifications concerning the Evolved Packet Core Networks.
  

List of error-correcting codes[edit]