What Is a Bit Error Rate?
Symbol error rate (SER: symbol error rate) is an indicator that measures the accuracy of data transmission within a specified time. Bit error rate = bit errors in transmission / total number of codes transmitted * 100% [1] . If there are bit errors, there is a bit error rate. In addition, the bit error rate is also defined as a frequency used to measure the occurrence of bit errors. The study of bit error rate under specific conditions is of great significance for enhancing the performance of wireless communication systems and improving the quality of data transmission [2] .
- Errors occur due to
- In data transmission, the number of bit errors (English: biterrors ) is the number of bits in the received channel that the data stream has changed due to noise, interference, lossy, or bit synchronization errors [2] . The bit error probability (bit error probability) is the expected value of the bit error rate. The error rate can be regarded as a rough estimate of the error probability. For long periods and high error bits, this estimate is more accurate [4] .
BER calculation
- The bit error rate is the probability that the amount of information of a symbol will be lost in the transmission system. When transmitting binary symbols, bit error rate = bit error rate. For digital communication systems, the smaller the error rate, the higher the reliability [5] . The formula for calculating the bit error rate is:
- Bit error rate = amount of information (bits) transmitted by the system per unit time / total amount of information (total bits) transmitted by the system per unit time
Bit error rate example
- As an example, suppose the transmitted bit serial is: 0110001011
- The received bit serial is: 0010101001,
- In this example, the number of error bits (underlined bits) is three. The error rate is the number of errored bits 3 divided by the number of transmitted bits 10, which is 0.3 or 30%.
Factors Influencing Bit Error Rate
- In communication systems, the bit error rate at the receiving end will be affected by transmission channel noise, interference, loss [6] , bit synchronization problems, attenuation, wireless multipath fading [7] , and so on.