Resilience of Error Correction Codes Against Harsh Electromagnetic Disturbances: Fault Mechanisms

Abstract

Modern safety-critical systems rely heavily on robust communication channels. Even though these communication channels can be protected by Error Detection and Correction Codes, vulnerabilities caused by False Negatives still exist. These False Negatives can be caused by harsh electromagnetic disruptions and are detriment to overall safety. This paper considers the construction and structure of Triplication-based Error Correction Codes to find the most EMI-resilient code. Each code is tested and simulated in terms of the occurrence rate of False Negatives under single-frequency disturbances. It is found that a code with inversion is significantly more robust to these disturbances. Furthermore, a systematic fault injection is also performed to search for vulnerabilities within the code itself. The systematic approach allows us to reverse-engineer the expected vulnerabilities to real-world disturbances.

Resilience of Error Correction Codes Against Harsh Electromagnetic Disturbances: Fault Elimination for Triplication-Based Error Correction Codes

“…From [4], it can be concluded that a simple triplication method is the most effective in terms of limiting the number of False Negatives under harsh EMI disturbances. The simple triplication method is denoted as TEC, since it sends the data three times (Triplication), without inversion (Equal) and bit by bit (Close together).…”

“…In [4], a selection of Error Detection and Correction Codes (EDCCs) -which are frequently used in FS Engineeringhave been studied and compared in the context of harsh EMI. That research determined the fault mechanisms associated with continuous-wave electromagnetic disturbances.…”

“…Within this paper, the insights of [4] are used to cope with False Negatives under reverberation room conditions. From the state of the art mentioned in [4], this paper proposes optimized EDCCs that completely eliminate the occurrence of False Negatives under continuous wave disturbances.…”

“…Section II details the experimental setup. To enable an effective comparison, the most EMI-resilient EDCC from [4] (simple triplication) is selected and used as a baseline for further experiments. Details about this baseline are given in Section III.…”

“…[6] II. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP To assist the reader in his/her understanding of the remainder of this paper, we repeat Section II of [4]. Moreover, Section II-A is a repetition from Section III of [5] where the induced voltage calculation is elaborated.…”