Resilience of Reed-Solomon Codes Against Harsh Electromagnetic Disturbances: Influence of Over-Voltage Detection

Abstract

Communication networks are the backbone of the modern safety-critical systems. Thus, it is crucial to protect these error-prone networks against electromagnetic disturbances in ever more polluted electromagnetic environments. One major vulnerability in communication networks, even the networks which are armed with Error Detection and Correction Codes, is undetected incorrect data, also known as false negatives. From the safety viewpoint, false negatives must be mitigated to an as low as reasonably practicable level. This paper presents the influence of over-voltage detection on the behavior of primitive Reed-Solomon Codes under harsh single-frequency electromagnetic disturbances. In this regards, three different threshold pairs are employed. Our simulations show that by choosing an appropriate range, over-voltage detection could substantially decrease the number of false negatives. Furthermore, it is found that this improvement in the electromagnetic resiliency of Reed-Solomon Codes has been obtained at a cost: decreasing the availability. Nevertheless, this study takes advantage of this trade-off to provide a more resilient system in a safety-critical environment, as is the aim of this paper.