Joint Error Detection and Correction for Safety Communication: Reducing the Alarm Rate of Transmitted Safety Messages

The cyclic redundancy check (CRC) codes have been commonly applied in all existing safety communication protocols for error detection, but not for error correction. With the latest progress on random additive decoding (GRAND), this paper proposes a joint error detection and correction strategy. Operating under the “Black Channel” principle and the binomial-distributed channel model defined by the IEC 61784-3 Standard, we achieve a significant reduction in the alarm rate of transmitted safety messages. Our results, evaluated at a message length of 64 bits in the worst industry cases with a bit error rate (BER) of 10⁻², show that our strategy reduces BER from 4.6 × 10⁻³ to 3.1 × 10⁻⁵ and packet error rate (PER) from 1.3 × 10⁻² to 3.9 × 10⁻⁴, outperforming the benchmark CRC decoding algorithm. Maintaining the integrity of existing functional safety protocols, our approach offers a viable pathway toward enhancing the performance of safety communications. Additionally, we identify and discuss critical areas for future research and potential collaborations.