Error Checking and Correction

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What Does Error Checking and Correction Mean?

Error checking and correction is a process aimed at ensuring and improving data retrieval reliability. Data reliability is absolutely critical for processing, record keeping, and e-commerce.

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Data exchanged through channels must be verified at the source and retrieval points. This data exchange may apply to a variety of paradigms, including stored data and a processor or two computers over a LAN/Internet connection. Both stored and transmitted data involve physical interaction, which creates added noise and may lead to a change in value.

Techopedia Explains Error Checking and Correction

Powerful error checking and correction methods are continually in the development process. An early simple method involved multiple, repeated, and compared data submissions. However, because this method abuses physical resources, it is not frequently used.

Perhaps the most efficient error-detection technique is the parity check, where a single extra bit is added at the end of each byte. Its value is decided according to a fixed rule, that is, keeping the number of “1’s” even or odd per byte. The data receiver processes each byte and estimates the parity bit. If a comparison shows a difference in data, the receiver asks the transmitter to resend the data after indicating a transmission error.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.