Resilience of Reed-Solomon Codes against Single-Frequency Electromagnetic Disturbances: Fault Mechanisms and Fault Elimination through Symbol Inversion

Abstract

Modern safety-critical systems depend heavily on communication networks while operating in increasingly polluted electromagnetic environments. Forward Error Correction codes are increasingly being used in safety-critical applications; however, vulnerabilities can still be caused by undetected corrupted data. Within this paper, the effectiveness of primitive Reed–Solomon Codes under single-frequency electromagnetic disturbances is assessed. Additionally, the impact of various parameters including the message length, the Reed–Solomon Codes’ symbol size, and the amplitude of the induced voltages are also investigated. Simulations show that, at harmonics and some certain ratios of the bit-rate frequency, the susceptibility of Reed–Solomon Codes relative to this type of disturbance increases substantially. In worse-case scenarios, the rate of undetected corrupted data at these ratios could increase to values above 80%. It is shown that the main reason that Reed–Solomon Codes fail to detect such errors is due to the repetitive nature of code words’ symbols, as well as a special relation among the symbol size, the channel’s bit-rate, and the disturbance frequency. Accordingly, this paper proposes to add an extra inversion layer to the communication protocol to enhance the resiliency of these codes against single-frequency electromagnetic disturbances. Finally, it is shown that the proposed layer substantially mitigates the ratio of undetected corrupted data under the considered electromagnetic environment. By using the proposed approach, the rate of undetected corrupted data at the frequencies of concern decreased to values near 0%.

Effectiveness of Forward Error Corrections Over Different Wired Communication Channels in Harsh Electromagnetic Environments

“…In previous studies, the effectiveness of several FECs were investigated against steady-state single-frequency EMD by means of our in-house developed simulation framework [3]- [5]. It was found that the majority of undetected corrupted data is produced owing to the repetitiveness in the generated code words.…”

“…This paper has employed the same fault model as used in [4], [5]. By default, this fault model uses a fixed induced voltage over a frequency range to generate steady-state singlefrequency EMD.…”

“…). As these patterns are valid based on the initially generated dictionaries, FECs are unable to detect these errors [4], [5]. This explains why the Triplication approach outperforms the Hamming and Reed-Muller codes.…”

Resilience of Reed-Solomon Codes Against Single-Frequency Electromagnetic Disturbances: Fault Elimination Through Encoder Tuning

“…A nonzero syndrome, however, implies the presence of faults, and it demands further steps to correct the code word. Note that this paper follows the same correction steps employed in [4].…”

“…Therefore, it is vital to reduce the number of UCD to a level as low as reasonably practicable in safety or mission critical applications. In our previous studies, the effectiveness of a well-known FEC, known as primitive Reed-Solomon Codes (RS Codes), was investigated against steady-state single-frequency EMD by means of our in-house simulation framework [4], [5]. It was found that the majority of UCD are caused by onesymbol-value code words (i.e.…”