Checksum and Cyclic Redundancy Check Mechanism

Synonyms

Cyclic redundancy check (CRC)

Definition

Checksum and CRC are schemes for detecting the errors of data which occur during transmission or storage. The data computed and appended to original data in order to detect errors are also referred as checksum and CRC.

A checksum consists of a fixed number of bits computed as a function of the data to be protected, and is appended to the data. To detect errors, the function is recomputed, and the result is compared to that appended to the data. Simple implementation of checksum is to divide the data into same length bits chunk and to make exclusive-or of all chunks. Cyclic redundancy check mechanism exploits mathematical properties of cyclic codes. Specifically, CRC uses polynomial devisor circuits with a given generator polynomial so as to obtain the remainder polynomial. The remainder is similarly appended to the original data for transmission and storage, and then utilized for error detection. CRC can be used as a kind of checksum.

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