An embodiment of the invention provides a method of correcting 2 bits and detecting three bit using an extended bidirectional Hamming code. A data word with length K=2m−1 is received. A code word with length N=2m−1+2m+1 is generated from the data word in accordance with the extended bidirectional Hamming code defined by the following parity check matrix: H = [ 1 1 … 1 1 α … α N - 1 1 α - 1 … α - N + 1 ] . The number of parity bit is given by (2m+1).