Method and apparatus for transmission error characterisation

摘要

This invention relates to measurement of error characteristics of a communication channel. It is of particular use for measuring perceived transmission performance of the communication channel. The invention provides a method and apparatus for measuring transmission error characteristics of a communications channel employing forward error correction, in which the following steps are repeatedly performed: transmitting a coded data sequence comprising a sequence of symbols corresponding to a known data sequence via said communications channel; receiving a possibly degraded version of said coded data sequence via said communications channel to provide a received data sequence at a receiver; generating a coded data sequence corresponding to said known data sequence at the receiver to provide a generated sequence at the receiver; comparing the generated sequence to the received sequence to provide error characterisation information comprising a sequence of symbols; and updating a statistical representation of the transmission error characteristics according to said error characterisation information. The invention also provides a method and apparatus for measuring perceived transmission performance of a communications channel in which the perceived transmission performance is generated according to measured transmission error characteristics. <IMAGE>