ECEN 3224 DATA COMMUNICATIONS

MODULE 2: ERROR CONTROL & DATA LINK PROTOCOLS

Mc WINLEY T. GALLEMIT, ECE
I. ERROR CONTROL
A. Types of Data Communication Error
1. Single Bit Error – when only 1 bit within a given data string is in error
2. Multiple Bit Error – when two or more non-consecutive bits within a data string
are in error
3. Burst Error – when two or more characters within a given data string are in
error
B. Error Detection – process of monitoring data transmission and determining when errors
have occurred
1. Redundancy Checking – adding bits for a sole purpose of detecting errors
a. Vertical Redundancy Checking (VRC) – simples error-detecting scheme
and referred to as character parity or simply parity.
i. Odd parity
ii. Even parity
b. Checksum – a numerical value is added to the end of the message which
is the sum of all the numerical values of each characters
c. Longitudinal Redundancy Checking (LRC) – redundancy error detection
scheme that uses parity to determine if a transmission has occurred
within a message and is also called message parity
d. Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC) – most reliable redundancy checking
method which detects 99.9999% of the errors
C. Error Correction – process of correcting the data that are detected to have errors
1. Retransmission – when a station requests the transmit station to resend a
message (or part of the message) when the message is received in error
a. Automatic repeat request/ automatic retransmission request (ARQ) –
most reliable method of error correction
i. Discrete ARQ
 Positive Acknowledgement (ACK) – the destination
sends a positive acknowledgement when it receives the
message without error
 Negative Acknowledgement (NACK ) – the destination
sends a negative acknowledgement when it receives a
message
 Retransmission after time-out – if the sender did not
receive any acknowledgement after a specific amount
of time (called time out), it automatically retransmits
the message
ii. Continuous ARQ (Selective Repeat)
 the message is divided into blocks or frames that are
sequentially numbered, so the sender can continuously
transmit without waiting for the acknowledgement
 b. Forward Error Correction – process of adding redundant bits to the
message before transmission so the receiver can correct errors without
the need for retransmission
i. Hamming Code – most common error-correction code

II. DATA COMMUNICATION HARDWARE

A. Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) – virtually any digital terminal device that generates,
transmits, receives, or interprets data messages (E.g. terminals, clients, servers, etc)
B. Data Communication Equipment (DCE) – a general term used to describe equipment
that interfaces data terminal equipment to the transmission channel (E.g. modem)

III. DATA LINK CONTROL PROTOCOLS

C. Data Link Protocol Functions
1. Line Discipline – determines which device is transmitting and which is receiving
at any point in time
a. ENQ/ACK – (for point to point)
i. ENQ – primary station asks secondary if it is ready to receive
message
ii. ACK – positive acknowledgement if it is ready to receive
message (NACK if not)
b. Poll/Select - (point for multipoint)
i. Poll – primary station asks if secondary has a message to send
 Secondary station will respond NAK if it doesn.t have a
message to send
 Secondary station will send the Message directly if it
does
ii. Select – primary asks if secondary is ready to receive message
 Secondary will respond ACK if it is ready to receive
 Secondary will respond NAK if it is not ready to receive
and the primary will try again later
2. Flow Control – coordinates the rate at which data are transported over a link
and generally provides an acknowledgement mechanism that ensures data is
received
a. Stop and Wait ARQ– the primary sends a frame and waits for an
acknowledgement from the secondary station before it transmits again
i. Pros: simplicity
ii. Cons: speed of transmission
b. Sliding Window ARQ– the primary station sends several frames in
succession before receiving an acknowledgement
i. Pros – speed
ii. Cons – complexity

Maximum Number of bits frames that can be sent without

acknowledgement
 𝑀𝑎𝑥 = 2𝑛 − 1
Where, n = number of address bits in the control field (see SDLC)

Bandwidth-Delay Product – how many links can fill up a network

link which is calculated as the product of the link capacity of the
channel and the round trip delay time transmission

3. Error Control – means of detecting and correcting transmission errors

a. Error Detection
i. VRC
ii. LRC
iii. CRC
b. Correction (Retransmission)
i. Stop and Wait ARQ
 Stop and Wait ARQ
ii. Sliding Window ARQ
 Go back n frames ARQ– going back to transmit n frames
that contains error and all the frames after it
 Selective Repeat or Selective Reject (SREJ) ARQ–
retransmitting only the frame with errors
D. Character Oriented vs Bit Oriented Protocols
1. Character Oriented – interprets a frame of data as a group of successive bits
combined into predefined patterns of fixed length, usually 8 bits each
a. Asynchronous – uses start or stop bits (Eg. XModem, YModem)
b. Synchronous –uses synchronizing frames
i. Bi-sync communication – uses two SYN character (0x16) to
indicate the beginning of each character
ii. PPP Protocol – a data link layer control protocol between two
routers without any routers or any network in between
2. Bit Oriented – data link information protocol are transferred as a series of
successive bits that may be interpreted individually in a bit-by-bit basis or in
groups of several bits.
a. Synchronous Data Link Control (SLDC) – a bit-oriented protocol
developed by IBM for system network architecture (SNA) environments
b. High Level Data Link Control (HLDC) – a higher level SDLC with advance
functionalities
E. Point-to-point Protocol (PPP)
1. Functions of PPP
a. Defines the frame format to be exchanged between devices
b. Defines how packets are encapsulated in the data link frame
2. PPP Frame
a. Flag Field – 1-byte field located one at the beginning and one at the end
of a PPP frame. The value is 0x7E or binary 01111110. Unlike in
SDLC/HDLC, this is considered as a byte and not as individual bits
 b. Address Field –value is 0xFF which is the broadcast address the
communication happens between only two devices
c. Control Field – the value is set to binary (0b11000000)
d. Protocol Field – 2-byte field which indicates the type of data is being
carried
i. 0xC021 –Link Control Protocols (LCP)
ii. 0xC023 – Password Authentication Protocols (PAP)
iii. 0xC223 –Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP)
iv. 0x8021 – Internet Protocol Control Protocol (IPCP)
v. 0x0021 – Internet Protocol (IP)
e. Information Field (Payload) – contains the information data (Max.
1500MTU)
Byte Stuffing – additional bytes are added to the data (usually
an ESC character) where there is the same character as the Flag
f. Padding – optional padding to make all frame uniform in terms of frame
length
g. Frame Check Sequence – 2-byte frame which is usually a CRC-16 code
F. Synchronous Data Link Protocols (SLDC)
1. Types of Transmission Nodes
a. Primary station – controls data exchange on communication channel
and issues commands
b. Secondary station – receives commands from the primary station
2. Transmission States
a. Transient – exists before and after an initial transmission and after each
line turnaround
b. Idle – the circuit is idle if the receiver receives fifteen (15) consecutive
logic 1
c. Active- exists whenever either primary or one of the secondary stations
is transmitting information or control signals
3. SLDC Frame
a. SLDC Flag Field – flag field at the beginning and another at the end of
the frame. The bit sequence for a flag is 0x7E hex (binary 0111110)
i. Bit stuffing –addition of bit ‘0’ to five consecutive ‘1s’ so the
receiver won’t mistake any other pattern as a flag bit
b. Address Field – contains eight bits that can represent 254 addresses
(address 00 is not used and called the ‘null address’ while address FF is
not used as broadcast address)
i. If the frame is being sent from primary to secondary, address
field contains the address of the secondary (destination)
ii. If the frame is being sent from secondary to primary, address
field contains the address of the secondary (source)
c. Control Field – identifies the type of frame being transmitted which is
either of the following
 i. Information Frame (I-Frame) – indicates that the frame
contains and information field
 Bit 0-2 – number received
 Bit 3 – poll/not to poll, or final/not final flag
 Bit 4-6 – number sent
 Bit 7 – indicates information frame (‘0’)
ii. Supervisory frame (S-Frame)– frame used for polling and no
information field is allowed
 Bit 0-2 – number received
 Bit 3 – poll/not to poll, final/not final flag
 Bit 4-5 – function code
 00 – ready to receive (RR) – used to
acknowledge the receipt of good frame
 01 – ready not to receive (RNR) – used to
acknowledge the receipt of good frame and
that the receiver is not yet ready to receive
more frames
 10 – rej (REJ) – used for NAK for Go-back-N ARQ
 11 – not used for SDLC
 Bit 6-7 – indicates supervisory frame (‘01’)
iii. Unnumbered Frame (U-Frame) –used to send network control
and status information
 Bit 0-2 – function code
 Bit 3 – poll/not to poll, final/not final flag
 Bit 4-5 – function code
 Bit 6-7 – indicates unnumbered frame (‘11’)

Figure: U-Frame Common Functions

 d. Information (or Text) Field – all information are contained the this field
which should be in the multiple of eight bits
e. Frame Check Sequence (FCS) Field – contains error detection
mechanism for SDLC. SDLC uses CRC-16 with a generating polynomial:
x16 + x12 +x5 + x1
G. High-Level Data Link Control (HLDC) –majority of the characteristics of HDLC are the
same with SDLC with some major upgrades the following fields.
1. Address Field
a. Permits limitless number of addresses.
Note: 7 bits can be used per byte. A logic high in the last bit in every
byte means that it is the last address field byte while a logic zero in the
last bit in each byte means that there is another address byte that will
follow.
2. Information Field
a. HDLC permits any number of bits per character in the information field
response or command as long that all characters have the same number
of bits
3. Control Field
a. Control Field can be extended to 16bits (7bits ns, 7bits nr, 1bit P/F, 1 bit,
frame type indicator)
b. Bit 4-5 in the supervisory frame with value of ‘11’, now corresponds to a
fourth condition called Selective Reject (SREJ) which is used as NAK as
request for transmission of a single frame