In this paper we study the decoding capabilities of convolutional codes over
the erasure channel. Of special interest will be maximum distance profile (MDP)
convolutional codes. These are codes which have a maximum possible column
distance increase. We show how this strong minimum distance condition of MDP
convolutional codes help us to solve error situations that maximum distance
separable (MDS) block codes fail to solve. Towards this goal, we define two
subclasses of MDP codes: reverse-MDP convolutional codes and complete-MDP
convolutional codes. Reverse-MDP codes have the capability to recover a maximum
number of erasures using an algorithm which runs backward in time. Complete-MDP
convolutional codes are both MDP and reverse-MDP codes. They are capable to
recover the state of the decoder under the mildest condition. We show that
complete-MDP convolutional codes perform in certain sense better than MDS block
codes of the same rate over the erasure channel.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, to appear on IEEE Transactions on Information
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