ERROR DETECTION AND

CORRECTION
STALLINGS CHAPTER 6
ERRORS
• Error: When a bit is altered between transmission and reception
Examples:
• Binary 1 is transmitted and a binary 0 is received
• Binary 0 is transmitted and a binary 1 is received
ERRORS
• General Types of Errors:
• Single-bit error: an isolated error condition that alters one bit but does
not affect nearby bits
• Burst error: determined by length B, is a contiguous sequence of B bits
in which the first and last bits and any number of intermediate bits are
received in error
ERRORS
• General Types of Errors:
ERRORS
• Single-bit error can occur in the presence of white noise, when a slight
random deterioration of the signal-to-noise ratio is sufficient to
confuse the receiver’s decision of a single bit
• Burst error are more common and more difficult to deal with, caused
by impulse noise
• Cause of errors are also fading for the mobile wireless environment
ERRORS
• How to correct errors:
1. Error-Detection Codes: have to know there is an error and where is
the error located
2. Error-Correction Codes (Forward Error Correction Codes):
automatically replace the data in error (since binary can easily
replace 1 to 0 or 0 to 1)
3. Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) Protocols: automatically send
control signals to source to resend the data
ERROR DETECTION
• Errors are unavoidable to all digital transmission systems
• Probabilities of errors: what is the chance that a single-bit or burst
error occurs, assuming data is sent by groups of bits called frames
• Probabilities of errors:
• Pb: Probability that a bit is received in error; also known as the bit
error rate (BER)
• P1: Probability that a frame arrives with no bit errors
ERROR DETECTION
• Probabilities of errors:
• P2: Probability that, with an error-detecting algorithm in use, a frame
arrives with one or more undetected errors
• P3: Probability that, with an error-detecting algorithm in use, a frame
arrives with one or more detected bit errors but no undetected bit
errors
ERROR DETECTION
• Probabilities of errors:
𝑭
𝑷𝟏 = (𝟏 − 𝑷𝒃 )
F = number of bits per frame
𝑷𝟐 = 𝟏 − 𝑷𝟏
Note: the longer the frame, the more bits it has and the higher the
probability that one of these is in error
ERROR DETECTION
• Example 1: If a transmission system is transmitting 32 bits per frame,
and has a BER of 0.0002, what is the probability that no error
occurs? And what is the probability that an undetected error can
occur?
ERROR DETECTION
• Example 1: If a transmission system is transmitting 32 bits per frame, and has a BER of
0.0002, what is the probability that no error occurs? And what is the probability that
an undetected error can occur?

• Solution:
• Given:
• F = 32
• BER = PF = 0.0002
• Find P1 and P2
ERROR DETECTION
• Example 1: If a transmission system is transmitting 32 bits per frame, and has a BER of
0.0002, what is the probability that no error occurs? And what is the probability that
an undetected error can occur?

• Solution:
𝑃1 = (1 − 𝑃𝑏 ) 𝐹
𝑃1 = (1 − 0.0002) 32
𝑷𝟏 = 𝟎. 𝟗𝟗𝟑𝟔
ERROR DETECTION
• Example 1: If a transmission system is transmitting 32 bits per frame, and has a BER of
0.0002, what is the probability that no error occurs? And what is the probability that
an undetected error can occur?

• Solution:
𝑷𝟐 = 𝟏 − 𝑷𝟏
𝑷𝟐 = 𝟏 − 𝟎. 𝟗𝟗𝟑𝟔
𝑷𝟐 = 𝟎. 𝟎𝟎𝟔𝟒
ERROR DETECTION PROCESS
ERROR DETECTION PROCESS
• For a given frame of bits, additional bits that constitute an error-
detecting code are added by the transmitter
• This code is calculated as a function of the other transmitted bits
• For a data block of k bits, the error-detecting algorithm yields an
error-detecting code of n - k bits, where (n - k) < k
• The error-detecting code, also referred to as the check bits, is
appended to the data block to produce a frame of n bits, which is
then transmitted
ERROR DETECTION PROCESS
• The receiver separates the incoming frame into the k bits of data and
(n - k) bits of the error-detecting code
• The receiver performs the same error-detecting calculation on the
data bits and compares this value with the value of the incoming
error-detecting code
• A detected error occurs if and only if there is a mismatch
ERROR DETECTION PROCESS
• Thus P3 is the probability that a frame contains errors and that the
error-detecting scheme will detect that fact
• P2 is known as the residual error rate and is the probability that an
error will be undetected despite the use of an error-detecting scheme
PARITY CHECK
• Simplest error-correcting scheme
• Uses parity count and parity bit
• Parity count: how many logic 1’s are there in the frame
• Parity bit: has the value depending on the parity count, appended to
the end of the frame:
• Logic 1if parity count is odd (odd parity)
• Logic 0 if parity count is even (even parity)
PARITY CHECK
Strengths:
• Easy to detect single-bit errors
Weaknesses:
• If bits are inverted, errors remain undetected
TWO DIMENSIONAL PARITY CHECK
• The string of data bits to be checked is arranged in a two
dimensional array
• Appended to each row i is an even parity bit ri for that row, and
appended to each column j is an even parity bit cj for that column
• An overall parity bit p completes the matrix
• The error-detecting code consists of i + j + 1 parity bits
• Every bit participates in two parity checks
TWO DIMENSIONAL PARITY CHECK
TWO DIMENSIONAL PARITY CHECK
TWO DIMENSIONAL PARITY CHECK
• Uncorrectable
TWO DIMENSIONAL PARITY CHECK
• Example 2: Encode the parity bits of the following two-dimensional
frames:
TWO DIMENSIONAL PARITY CHECK
• Example 2: Encode the parity bits of the following two-dimensional
frames:
• Solution:
TWO DIMENSIONAL PARITY CHECK
• Example 3: Detect where is the error for the following frames:
TWO DIMENSIONAL PARITY CHECK
• Example 3: Detect where is the error for the following frames:
• Solution: Find which of the parity counts are wrong
THE INTERNET CHECKSUM
• An error-detecting code used in many Internet standard protocols,
including IP, TCP, and UDP
• The calculation makes use of the ones-complement operation and
ones-complement addition (from logic circuits class)
• The checksum is included as a field in the header of a protocol data
unit, such as in IP datagram
THE INTERNET CHECKSUM
• Ones-complement addition
THE INTERNET CHECKSUM
• To compute the checksum, the checksum field is first set to all zeros
• The checksum is then calculated by performing the ones-complement
addition of all the words in the header, and then taking the ones-
complement operation of the result
• This result is placed in the checksum field
• To verify a checksum, the ones-complement sum is computed over the
same set of octets, including the checksum field
• If the result is all 1 bits, the check succeeds (no error)
THE INTERNET CHECKSUM
• Example 4: Consider a header that consists of 10 octets, with the
checksum in the last two octets (this does not correspond to any actual
header format) with the following content (in hexadecimal):
00 01 F2 03 F4 F5 F6 F7 00 00
Note that the checksum field is set to zero.
THE INTERNET CHECKSUM
• Step 1: group the hexadecimal digits into streams of four
0001
F203
F4F5
F6F7
0000
THE INTERNET CHECKSUM
• Step 2: add the groups by pair (one and the next), either using
binary addition or hexadecimal addition, the result is added to the
next digits
If no carry, don’t add the carry, if there is a carry (more than the
groups digits), add it to the last digit
THE INTERNET CHECKSUM
• Step 3: If all digits are added, the result is then complemented (i.e.
flip the binary digits 0  1 and 1  0)
THE INTERNET CHECKSUM
• Step 4: To verify, simply repeat steps 1-2,
when the result is added to the result in
step 3, if the result is all 1’s (e.g. FFFF),
then no error, otherwise, there is an error
THE INTERNET CHECKSUM
• The Internet checksum provides greater error-detection capability
than a parity bit or two-dimensional parity scheme but is
considerably less effective than the cyclic redundancy check (CRC)
• Very efficient to use for the Internet Protocols
• Internet checksum is simply an additional end-to-end check for errors
CYCLIC REDUNDANCY CHECK (CRC)
• One of the most common, and one of the most powerful, error-
detecting codes
• Given a k-bit block of bits, or message, the transmitter generates an
(n - k)-bit sequence, known as a frame check sequence (FCS)
• The receiver then divides the incoming frame by that number and, if
there is no remainder, assumes there was no error
• Uses modulo 2 arithmetic, polynomial division, and digital logic
CYCLIC REDUNDANCY CHECK (CRC)
Modulo 2 arithmetic:
• Modulo addition: uses binary addition with no carries, which is just the
exclusive-OR (XOR) operation
• Binary subtraction with no carries is also interpreted as the XOR
operation
• Add using FCS
CYCLIC REDUNDANCY CHECK (CRC)
Polynomial Division:
• Express all values as polynomials in a dummy variable X, with binary
coefficients
• Logic 1 = coefficient 1, Logic 0 = coefficient 0
• Example: 110101 = 𝑥 5 + 𝑥 4 + 𝑥 2 + 1
• Divide by pre-determined FCS
CYCLIC REDUNDANCY CHECK (CRC)
Polynomial Division:
CYCLIC REDUNDANCY CHECK (CRC)
Digital Logic:
• The CRC process can be represented by, and indeed implemented as,
a dividing circuit consisting of XOR gates and a shift register
• The shift register is a string of 1-bit storage devices
• Each device has an output line, which indicates the value currently
stored, and an input line
• At discrete time instants, known as clock times, the value in the storage
device is replaced by the value indicated by its input line
CYCLIC REDUNDANCY CHECK (CRC)
Digital Logic:
• The circuit is implemented as follows:
1. The register contains n - k bits, equal to the length of the FCS
2. There are up to n - k XOR gates
3. The presence or absence of a gate corresponds to the presence or
absence of a term in the divisor polynomial, P(X), excluding the terms 1
and X (n – k)
CYCLIC REDUNDANCY CHECK (CRC)
Digital Logic:
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
• Enable the receiver to correct errors in an incoming transmission on
the basis of the bits in that transmission
• Key to correcting errors: Codeword
• Codeword is generated via FEC encoder
• Correction is guided by codeword through FEC decoder
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
• FEC outcomes:
1. No errors: If there are no bit errors, the input to the FEC decoder is
identical to the original codeword, and the decoder produces the
original data block as output
2. Detectable, correctable errors: For certain error patterns, it is
possible for the decoder to detect and correct those errors. Thus,
even though the incoming data block differs from the transmitted
codeword, the FEC decoder is able to map this block into the
original data block
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
• FEC outcomes:
3. Detectable, not correctable errors: For certain error patterns, the
decoder can detect but not correct the errors. In this case, the
decoder simply reports an uncorrectable error
4. Undetectable errors: For certain, typically rare, error patterns, the
decoder does not detect the error and maps the incoming n-bit
data block into a k-bit block that differs from the original k-bit
block
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
Block Code Principles
• Hamming distance: d(v1, v2) between two n-bit binary sequences v1
and v2 is the number of bits in which v1 and v2 have different bits in
the sequence
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
Block Code Principles
• For every blocks of data k-bits long, there is a unique n-bit codeword
• Each of the block is checked according to the codeword given to that
sequence
• If the codeword at the receiver matches a block, it has no errors,
otherwise, error is detected
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
Block Code Principles
• To correct an error:
1. Find the codeword that has no block matched
2. Find all other codewords possible with block matched
3. Get the Hamming distance of the codeword in #1 with all
codewords with #2
4. Get the minimum distance in #3 to determine the closest valid
codeword
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
Block Code Principles
• To correct an error:
5. Get the corresponding block for that minimum Hamming distance
6. In case of a tie, from #4, get the codeword that has a block that
only has a change of 1 bit, if there is still a tie, increase check of
change to 2 bits, and so on
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
Block Code Principles
• Example: If receiver got a codeword of 00100, and data block is
01, find and correct the error from the following valid codewords
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
Block Code Principles
• Example: If receiver got a codeword of 00100, and data block is
01, find and correct the error from the following valid codewords
FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION (FEC)
Block Code Principles
• Example: If receiver got a codeword of 00100, and data block is
01, find and correct the error from the following valid codewords
• Answer:
• Codeword = 00000
• Block = 00