Fault Tolerance Analysis of Communication System Interleavers: the 802.11a Case Study

The study of Multiple Soft errors on memory modules caused by radiation effects represents an interesting field of current research. The fault tolerance of these devices in radiation environments is traditionally analyzed and increased by means of soft error protection mechanisms as EDAC codes or physical interleaving. As Communication System interleavers are mainly implemented using memories, a similar protection against soft errors to the one used for memory devices could be performed, as a conventional solution, when they are used in critical missions. In this paper, the knowledge of the system is used to apply the communication interleaving pattern as physical interleaving employing the inherent redundancy (added by previous modules of the Communication System) of the data processed by the interleaver as an error correction mechanism. Therefore a similar protection to the conventional solutions is obtained but with a reduced cost.