Effectiveness of Cyclic Redundancy Checks under harsh electromagnetic disturbances

Modern programmable electronic devices are becoming more and more susceptible to Electromagnetic Interference, meanwhile relying heavily on communication networks. In those networks, Cyclic Redundancy Checks (CRCs) are widely used to validate the correctness of transmitted data. However, this paper shows that, at specific bit and disturbance frequencies, CRC can generate false positives. A formula to predict those is presented. By using an in-house simulation framework, different case studies are simulated to find if false positives can occur. At some frequencies, the amount of false positives can rise asymptotically to up to 50% of all received data words. Techniques to overcome this downside are provided and reviewed.