
Error Detection and Correction 115
codewordislessthand
min
;otherwise,errorscannotbedetected.Thisisbecauseifthenumberoferrorsin
acodewordisequaltoorgreaterthand
min
,thecodewordmaycorrespondtoanothervalidcodeword;as
aresult,thereceivermaynotbeabletodetecterrors.Theerror-detectionanderror-correctioncapabilities
ofanycodingtechniquelargelydependontheminimumHammingdistanceasexplainedbelow.
Toenablethereceivertoonlydetectupto nerrorsinthecodeword,d
min
mustbegreaterthanor
equalton + 1 .Forexample,ford
min
=5,uptofourerrorscanbedetectedinacodeword, ...