Systematic Error-Correcting Codes for Rank Modulation.

The rank-modulation scheme has been recently proposed for efficiently storing data in nonvolatile memories. In this paper, we explore $[n,k,d]$ systematic error-correcting codes for rank modulation. Such codes have length $n$ , $k$ information symbols, and minimum distance $d$ . Systematic codes have the benefits of enabling efficient information retrieval in conjunction with memory-scrubbing schemes. We study systematic codes for rank modulation under Kendall’s $\tau $ -metric as well as under the $\ell _\infty $ -metric. In Kendall’s $\tau $ -metric, we present $[k+2,k,3]$ systematic codes for correcting a single error, which have optimal rates, unless systematic perfect codes exist. We also study the design of multierror-correcting codes, and provide a construction of $[k+t+1,k,2t+1]$ systematic codes, for large-enough $k$ . We use nonconstructive arguments to show that for rank modulation, systematic codes achieve the same capacity as general error-correcting codes. Finally, in the $\ell _\infty $ -metric, we construct two $[n,k,d]$ systematic multierror-correcting codes, the first for the case of $d=O(1)$ and the second for $d=\Theta (n)$ . In the latter case, the codes have the same asymptotic rate as the best codes currently known in this metric. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]