Communication Reliability

Asst. Prof. Chaiporn Jaikaeo, Ph.D.

chaiporn.j@ku.ac.th
http://www.cpe.ku.ac.th/~cpj
Computer Engineering Department
Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand

Adapted from the notes by Lami Kaya, LKaya@ieee.org

2009 Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All rights reserved.

Sources of Transmission Errors

Attenuation
Interference
Distortion

Signal Attenuation

Attenuation Loss of energy

Signal strength falls off with distance

Transmission medium

Attenuation depends on medium

Attenuation is an increasing function of
frequency

Signal Distortion

Distortion Change in signal shape

Only happens in guided media

Propagation velocity varies with frequency

Interference

Also known as Noise

Undesirable signals added between the
transmitter and the receiver

Reducing Error

Shannon's Theorem suggests

Increase the signal-to-noise ratio

Mechanisms like shielded wiring can help lower
noise

Noise/interference cannot be eliminated

completely

But many transmission errors can be detected

In some cases, errors can be corrected
automatically
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Type of Transmission Errors

Single-Bit Errors

Burst Errors

Handling Errors

Forward Error Correction (FEC)

Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ)

Forward Error Correction

Error Detection Codes

Block and Convolutional Codes

Block Error Codes

Divides the data to be sent into a set of blocks

Extra information (known as redundancy)
attached to each block
Memoryless

Convolutional Error Codes

Treats data as a series of bits, and computes a

code over a continuous series
The code computed for a set of bits depends on
the current and previous input

Single Parity Checking

A simple form of block error code

Example 1
Suppose the sender wants to send the word world. In
ASCII the five characters are coded (with even parity) as
1110111 1101111 1110010 1101100 1100100

The following shows the actual bits sent

11101110 11011110 11100100 11011000 11001001

Example 2
Now suppose the word world in Example 1 is received by
the receiver without being corrupted in transmission.
11101110 11011110 11100100 11011000 11001001

The receiver counts the 1s in each character and comes up

with even numbers (6, 6, 4, 4, 4). The data are accepted.

Example 3

Now suppose the word world in Example 1 is corrupted

during transmission.
11111110 11011110 11101100 11011000 11001001

The receiver counts the 1s in each character and comes up

with even and odd numbers (7, 6, 5, 4, 4). The receiver
knows that the data are corrupted, discards them, and asks
for retransmission.

(n, k) Notation

Datawords

Codewords

Set of all possible encoded version

If a dataword contains k bits and r additional bits are added

to form a codeword, it is known as
(n, k) encoding scheme

Set of all possible messages

where n = k + r

The subset of 2n possible combinations are chosen to be

codewords

The subset is known as a codebook

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Example: Single Parity Check

The set of datawords consists of any possible

combination of 8-bits

k = 8 256 possible data words

n = 9 512 possibilities
Only half of the 512 values form valid codewords

Change to a single bit of a valid codeword

produces an invalid combination
Changing two bits produces another valid
codeword
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Hamming Distance

No channel coding scheme is ideal!

What is the minimum number of bits of a valid

codeword that must be changed to produce
another valid codeword?

changing enough bits will always transform to a valid

codeword

Measured by Hamming distance

Given two strings of n bits each, the Hamming

distance is defined as the number of differences

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Hamming Distance

2009 Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All rights reserved.

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Hamming Distance in a CodeBook

How many errors can transform a valid

codeword into another in a codebook?

We compute the Hamming distance between all

pairs of codewords in a given codebook

Answer to the above question is the

minimum Hamming distance among pairs in
a codebook

Denoted by dmin

Minimum Hamming Distance

Consider Single Parity Check

dmin = 2
Transmission with 2-bit error will be undetected

Internet Checksum

16-bit redundancy for any message

To compute a checksum, a sender

adds the numeric values of the 16-bit integers

using 1's complement arithmetic

and it transmits the result

Checksum

Cyclic Redundancy Codes (CRC)

Used in many digital networks and storage devices

Term cyclic is derived from a property of the codewords:

A circular shift of the bits of any codeword produces another one

Figure below shows a (7, 4) CRC by Hamming

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Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ)

Mechanisms

Whenever one side sends a message to

another, the other side sends a short
acknowledgement (ACK) message back
ARQ is especially useful in cases of dealing
with detecting errors

but not in cases for error correction

many computer networks use a CRC to detect
transmission errors

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ARQ Mechanisms

An ARQ scheme can be added to guarantee delivery if a

transmission error occurs

the receiver discards the message if an error occurs

and the sender retransmits another copy
Sender

Receiver

Time

Time

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ARQ: Lost Frame

Sender

Receiver

Time

Time

Timeout