Estimation of the Fidelity of Transmission of Discrete Messages over Channels with Bursts of Errors or Erasures

The lower bound of the probability of an incorrect decoding or erasure of a message transmitted with a given block length over a channel with bursts of errors or erasures, is expressed in terms of the probability of damage by bursts of a different number of symbols. Formulas are deduced for estimating the distribution of these probabilities by a model of an error source which agrees with experimental data relating to a standard telephone channel. The possibility of using the formulas obtained for estimating the probabilities of occurrence of different numbers of errors in a block of given length is indicated.