CHAPTER 3

ERROR DETECTION
AND CORRECTION
(14 MARKS)
 Errors in Data Communication

Data can be corrupted during transmission and is known

as error.
For reliable transmission ,errors must be detected and
corrected.
There are many reasons such as noise, cross-talk etc.,
which may help data to get corrupted during
transmission.

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 TYPES OF ERRORS

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 Types of Errors

There are two types of errors:

Single bit error
In a frame, there is only one bit, anywhere though, which is corrupt.

Burst error
Frame contains more than 1 consecutive bits corrupted.

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 Burst Error

• It means two or more bits in data unit are changed from 1 to 0 from 0
to 1 as shown in fig.
• In burst error, it is not necessary that only consecutive bits are
changed.
• The length of burst error is measured from first changed bit to last
changed bit.
• As shown in fig. length of burst error is 8, although some bits are
unchanged in between. Burst error is most likely to occur in a serial
transmission.

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 Error Detection

• Error detection uses the concept the concept of redundancy, which

means adding extra bits for detecting errors at the destination.
• A number of techniques are available now for error detection and
correction.
• Error detection is the process of detecting the error during the
transmission between the sender and the receiver.
• A few bits in association with the data are appended to the data unit
so that the receiver can detect the presence of error by using a
simple algorithm.

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 Error Detection
• Redundancy allows a receiver to check whether received data was corrupted during
transmission .
• Redundancy is the concept of using extra bits use in error detection.
• Redundant bits are called as parity bit.Parity may be odd or even.
• Odd and even parity signifies that the total of 1s in a bit tsring is an odd or even
number.

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Forward Error Correction versus Retransmission

 In the modern world of data communication, there

are two primary methods used for error correction
namely retransmission and forward error correction.
 Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Retransmission
(also called Automatic Repeat reQuest or ARQ) are
two methods used for error control in data
communication.
 They help ensure data integrity when transmitting
over unreliable channels, but they work differently.

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 Forward Error Correction(FEC)
 FEC is the only error correction schenme that actually detects and
corrects transmission errors when they are received without
requiring a retransmission.
 With FEC,redundant bits are added to the message before
transmission.
 When an error is detected the redundant bits are added to the
message before transmission .When an error is detected,the
redundant bits are used to determine which bit is in error.
 Correcting the bit is a simple matter of complementing it.The
number of redundant bits necessary to correct errors is much
greater than the number of bits needed to simply detect errors.
 Therefore FEC is generally limited to one,two or three bits.

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 FEC

 FEC is ideally suited for data communications systems when

acknowlegments are impractical or impossible ,such as simplex
transmissions are used to transmit messages to many receivers or
when the transmission ,acknowledgment and retransmission time is
excessive as when communicating to faraway places such as deep –
space vehicles.
 The purpose of FEC codes is to eliminate the time wasted for
retransmissions.Howevr,the addition of the FEC bits to each
message wastes time itself.Obviously,a trade –off is made between
ARQ and FEC,and system requirements determine which method is
best suited to a particular application.

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 FEC
Advantages:
•Reduces latency since errors are corrected at the receiver without waiting for
retransmissions.
•Useful for real-time applications (e.g., VoIP, video streaming) where
retransmission delays are undesirable.
•Works well in noisy channels where retransmission may be impractical (e.g.,
satellite communications).

•Disadvantages:
•Increases bandwidth usage due to added redundancy.
•Complex error-correcting codes require more processing power.

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 Retransmissions

 Retransmission ,as the name implies is when a receive station

requests to resend a message when the message is received in error.
 Because the receive terminal automatically calls for retranmission of
the entire message,retranmission is often called ARQ,which ia an old
two-way radio term that means Automatic Repeat Request or
Automatic Retransmission Request.
 ARQ is probably the most reliable method of error correction
,although it is not always the most efficient.

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Retransmission (ARQ)
• How it Works:
• The receiver detects errors and requests the sender to resend
the corrupted data.
• ARQ uses acknowledgments (ACKs) for successful reception and
negative acknowledgments (NAKs) for errors.
• Common ARQ protocols include Stop-and-Wait ARQ, Go-Back-N
ARQ, and Selective Repeat ARQ.

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 Retransmission (ARQ)
• Advantages:
• No need for extra redundancy in every transmission, making it more
bandwidth-efficient for low-error environments.
• Ensures 100% accuracy as erroneous data is resent.
• Disadvantages:
• Increases latency due to retransmissions, which is problematic for real-time
applications.
• Inefficient in high-error environments, as frequent retransmissions consume
bandwidth.

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 Error Detection Methods

• Error detection is the detection of errors caused by noise or other

impairments during transmission from the transmitter to the
receiver.
• There are four different error detection methods namely

✓ Repetition codes,
✓ VRC(Vertical Redundancy Check),
✓ LRC(Longitudinal Redundancy Check),
✓ CRC(Cyclic Redundancy Check) and
✓ Checksum.

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 Repetition Codes

 It is one of the most basic error-correcting codes.

 In order to transmit a message over a noisy channel that may
corrupt the transmission in a few places,the idea of the
repetition code is to just repeat the message several times.
 A repetition code is a coding scheme that repeats the bits
across a channel to achieve error-free communication.
 Given a stream of data to be transmitted ,the data are divided
into blocks of bits.
 Each block is transmitted some predetermined number of
times.
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 Repetition Codes

 For example,to send bit pattern “1011”,the four –bit block can
be repeated three times thus producing “1011 1011 1011”.
 However,if this twelve bit pattern was received as “1010 1011
1011”-where the first block is unlike the other two-it can be
determined that an error has ocuured.
 A repetition code is very inefficient and can be susuceptible to
problems if the error occurs in exactly the same place for each
group.(eg “1010 1010 1010”) in the previous example would
be detected as correct
 The advantage of repetition codes is that they are extremely
simple,and are in fact used in some transmission of numbers
stations.
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Advantages:
•Simple to implement.
•Effective for detecting and correcting single-bit errors.

Disadvantages:
•Inefficiency: Increases data size significantly.
•Limited Error Correction: Can only correct a small
number of errors per codeword.
•Not Optimal: More advanced codes (e.g., Hamming
codes)provide better error correction with less
redundancy.

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 Vertical Redundancy Check (VRC) or Parity Check

• The most common & the least expensive mechanism for

error detection is the vertical redundancy check(VRC)
• This method is also called as parity check.
• In this method a redundant bit, called a parity bit, is
appended to every data unit so that the total number of
1s in the unit (including parity bit) becomes even.
• In parity checking method, an additional bit called
parity bit added to each data word.
• There are even-parity check and odd-parity check. For
odd-parity check, the total number of 1s in the unit is
odd.

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 Vertical Redundancy Check(VRC) or
Parity Check
 In VRC, a parity bit is added to every data unit so that the total number of
1s become even.VRC is most common and least expensive mechanism.
 A redundant bit called parity bit is appended to every data unit.
 A parity bit is a bit that is added to a group of source bits to ensure that
the number of set bits in the outcome is even or odd.
 After appending redundant bit to data unit if the total number of 1s in the
packet becomes even then it is called as even parity checking and if the
total number of 1s in the packet becomes odd then it is called as odd
parity checking .
 A parity bit is added to a data packet for the purpose of error detection.
 Upon receipt of packet the parity needed for data is recomputed by local
hardware and compared to the parity bit received with the data.
 If any data bit has changed state,the parity will not match,and an error will
have been detected.
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 Vertical Redundancy Check(VRC) or
Parity Check

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 Vertical Redundancy Check(VRC) or Parity Check

• Suppose we want to transmit the binary data unit 1100001,

adding the number of 1s gives us 3, an odd number.
• Before transmitting, a parity generator counts the 1s and appends
the parity bit (a 1 in this case) to the end.
• The total number of 1 becomes 4 now (even number). The system
now transmits the entire appended unit across the network link.

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 Vertical Redundancy Check(VRC) or Parity Check

• When the data unit is reached its destination, the receiver puts all
eight bits through an even-parity checking function. If the receiver
sees 11100001, it counts and gets four 1s, an even number.
• But if the receiver sees 11100101, or total number of 1s is odd.
• The receiver knows that an error has been occurred into the data
somewhere and therefore rejects the whole unit.
• For the odd-parity checking, the principle is same but the calculation
is different.

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 Advantages and disadvantages of VRC

• The advantages of VRC are it can detect all single-bit errors. It also
can detect burst errors as long as the total number of bits changed is
odd (1,3,5, etc). The same holds true for any odd number of errors.

• The limitation is it cannot detect errors where the total number of

bits changed is even, where the two bits of the data unit are
changed. In this case, the total number of 1s is still even. The VRC
checker will add them and return an even number although the data
unit contains two errors. Then the unit will pass a parity check even
through the data unit is damaged. The same holds true for any even
number of errors.

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 Video on VRC

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 Longitudinal Redundancy Check(LRC) or
Two –dimensional Parity Check

• LRC is better than a simple Vertical Redundancy Check.

• In LRC ,a block of bits is divided into rows and as redundant row of
bits is added to the whole block.
• In this error detection method, a block of bits is organized in a table
with rows and columns.
• Then the parity bit for each column is calculated and a new row of
eight bits, which are the parity bits for the whole block, is created.
• After that the new calculated parity bits are attached to the original
data and sends to the receiver.

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 Longitudinal Redundancy Check(LRC) or
Two –dimensional Parity Check
Odd no of 1s: 1
Even no of 1s: 0

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 LRC
• LRC increases the likelihood of detecting burst error. An LRC
of n bits can easily detects a burst error of n bits.
• However, if two bits in one data unit are damaged and two bits
in exactly the same positions in another data unit are also
damaged, the LRC checker will not detect an error.

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 Example 1 LRC

• Suppose the following block is send using even parity

11100111 11011101 10101001 10101001 10101010

Data LRC

• However ,it is hit by a burst noise of length six and some bits are
corrupted.

11100111 01011101 00101001 10101001 10101010

Data LRC

Whether receiver will accept it or reject it.

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 Solution

11100111
01011101
00101001
10101001

00111010
LRC calculated by receiver

As both LRC (sent by sender and calculated by receiver )

are not matching so receiver will reject the data block.

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 Example 2 LRC

• Suppose the following block is send using even parity by sender

10101001 00111001 11011101 11100111 10101010

Data LRC

• Whether receiver will accept or reject it.

10101001
00111001
11011101
11100111

10101010
LRC calculated by receiver

As both LRC (sent by sender and calculated by receiver )are same so receiver will
accept the
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 Advantages and disadvantages of LRC

Advantage :
• LRC is improved error detection capability.

Disadvantage:
• More overhead is required in coding and decoding and
transmission of LRC.

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 Assuming even parity technique find the parity bit for following frames:
 i) 0000010 ii) 1111000 iii) 1010101 iv) 1011011

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 Video on LRC

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Thank You

Kalyani Pawar
Department of Information Technology(NBA Accredited)
Vidyalankar Polytechnic
Vidyalankar College Marg, Wadala(E), Mumbai 400 037
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 Any Questions

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