Vertical Redundancy Check (VRC) or Parity Check

Vertical Redundancy Check is also known as Parity Check. In this method, a redundant bit also called parity bit is added to each data unit. This method includes even parity and odd parity. Even parity means the total number of 1s in data is to be even and odd parity means the total number of 1s in data is to be odd. Example – If the source wants to transmit data unit 1100111 using even parity to the destination. The source will have to pass through Even Parity Generator. 

Even parity VRC

Parity generator will count number of 1s in data unit and will add parity bit. In the above example, number of 1s in data unit is 5, parity generator appends a parity bit 1 to this data unit making the total number of 1s even i.e 6 which is clear from above figure. Data along with parity bit is then transmitted across the network. In this case, 11001111 will be transmitted. At the destination, This data is passed to parity checker at the destination. The number of 1s in data is counted by parity checker. If the number of 1s count out to be odd, e.g. 5 or 7 then destination will come to know that there is some error in the data. The receiver then rejects such an erroneous data unit.

Advantages :

• VRC can detect all single bit error.
• It can also detect burst errors but only in those cases where number of bits changed is odd, i.e. 1, 3, 5, 7, …….etc.
• VRC is simple to implement and can be easily incorporated into different communication protocols and systems.
• It is efficient in terms of computational complexity and memory requirements.
• VRC can help improve the reliability of data transmission and reduce the likelihood of data corruption or loss due to errors.
• VRC can be combined with other error detection and correction techniques to improve the overall error handling capabilities of a system.

Disadvantages :

• The major disadvantage of using this method for error detection is that it is not able to detect burst error if the number of bits changed is even, i.e. 2, 4, 6, 8, …….etc. 
• Example – If the original data is 1100111. After adding VRC, data unit that will be transmitted is 11001111. Suppose on the way 2 bits are 01011111. When this data will reach the destination, parity checker will count number of 1s in data and that comes out to be even i.e. 8. So, in this case, parity is not changed, it is still even. Destination will assume that there is no error in data even though data is erroneous.
• VRC is not capable of correcting errors, only detecting them. This means that it can identify errors, but it cannot fix them.
• VRC is not suitable for applications that require high levels of error detection and correction, such as mission-critical systems or safety-critical applications.
• VRC is limited in its ability to detect and correct errors in large blocks of data, as the probability of errors increases with the size of the data block.
• VRC requires additional overhead bits to be added to the data stream, which can increase the bandwidth and storage requirements of the system.

Erroneous data accepted by receiver with number of changed bits