Measuring bit error rate of radio frequency transceivers

Abstract

A bit error rate test on a transceiver is accelerated by adding a phase offset to data phase encoding and decoding in the transceiver and by mapping bit error rate test results from an elevated error rate condition to a normal error rate condition for the transceiver. The elevated error rate is accomplished by adjusting the phase of the phase encoder and decoder with the value of the phase offset so that the encoded data transmission signal is not as robust against noise as it normally would be. Noise in the form of an interference signal is introduced during the transmission, and the bit error rate is measured after the receiver has decoded the signal. The bit error rate (BER) data with an elevated propensity for error is mapped against bit error rate data for normal operations. A mapping function is built to map BER(bit error rate elevated) data—data from the elevated error rate condition for data encoding, to BER(normal bit error rate) data—data from the normal error rate condition for data encoding. The BERdata is mapped to BERdata using the mapping function so that the BER performance of the transceiver may be measured using far fewer test sequences of digital bits.