DUCER: a Fast and Lightweight Error Correction Scheme for In-Vehicle Network Communication

Error handling and real-time are two fundamental needs for in-vehicle network communication. Traditionally, error detection code such as CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) is employed and a message is retransmitted if any error is detected. However, message retransmission can conflict with real-time constraints due to extra communication delay and uncertain waiting time. Conventional error correction code can avoid message retransmission, but entails long decoding time or expensive hardware cost. In some recent in-vehicle network protocols, such as FlexRay and Time-Triggered Ethernet, redundant communication channels are supported. We propose a fast yet lightweight error correction scheme that exploits this redundancy, called DUCER (DUal Crc Error coRrection). This scheme largely avoids message retransmission without changing the encoding of existing protocols and can correct 5-bit errors for 254-byte payload in less than 1 ms. Compared to Reed-Solomon code, DUCER is one order of magnitude faster in software decoding or reduces area cost by 89% in hardware implementation.