Technological Institute of the Philippines

Electronics Engineering Department

BER Instrumentation

Ö Design of Ex p eriment

OBJECTIVES:
1. To be able to describe BER Instrumentation
2. Determine the probability of error to occur upon setting up a noisy
communication channel
3. Demonstrate how the BER works

Course Code/Section: ECE 502/EC51FC1

Group No.: 4
Members: Signature In terpretation of Conclusion Ove rall
Da ta and Results
Lab Grade

Magadia, Morris Jay

Manlapig, Paul William

Moscare, Ace

Nagrama, Kristian Mark

Engr. Dennis Jefferson Amora

Instructor
 Problem
There are many discrepancy that can affect the transmission of
signals most likely the noise which can cause a lot of changes on the
intended message transmitting. The bit error rate is used to detect
and measure the amount of errors happened in the noise channel.

Here we our objectives are:

 To understand how the bit error rate works
 See the probability of errors that could occur upon the
noise communication channel
 Demonstrate how bit error rate works

 Approach
Most of the time communications theories are hardly visualize
and its system are presented in block diagrams which can be
represented by mathematical equations. Within the TIMS module
most of this mathematical equations and communication
systems are compacted in a single module for students and
others to visualize the communication system, and thus the
proponents successfully conducted and finish a design of
experiment

 Design
BER or bit error rate is a key parameter that is used in assessing systems
that transmit digital data from one location to another. Systems for
which bit error rate, BER is applicable include radio data links as well
as fiber optic data systems, Ethernet, or any system that transmits
data over a network of some form where noise, interference, and phase
jitter may cause degradation of the digital signal. Although there are
some differences in the way these systems work and the way in which bit
error rate is affected, the basics of bit error rate itself are still the
same. When data is transmitted over a data link, there is a possibility
of errors being introduced into the system. If errors are introduced into
the data, then the integrity of the system may be compromised. As a
result, it is necessary to assess the performance of the system, and bit
error rate, BER, provides an ideal way in which this can be achieved.
Unlike many other forms of assessment, bit error rate, BER assesses the
full end to end performance of a system including the transmitter,
receiver and the medium between the two. In this way, bit error rate, BER
enables the actual performance of a system in operation to be tested,
rather than testing the component parts and hoping that they will
operate satisfactorily when in place.
 Fig.1 TIMs Model for BER instrumentation

Fig.2 Complete system of Bit error rate

The experiment set up can be seen in the Fig.1 but to further understand and
elaborate the whole BER system we had added the whole system of the BER
along with its measurement in Fig.2
 TIMS Modules

Fig.3 Error Counter Utilities module and block diagram

EXCLUSIVE-OR LOGIC GATE the X-OR logic gate accepts standard TTL input signals. It
operates in two modes: normal and pulse output.

(i) In normal mode, no clock signal should be connected to the logic gate’s CLK
input. The output will be an uninterrupted result of the X-OR gate.
(ii) In pulse mode, a clock signal must be connected to the logic gate’s CLK input.
The logic gate’s result will only be passed to the output during the clock’s HI
period. Therefore, if the logic gate’s result is HI (logic 1) the output will
appear as one pulse or as a sequence of pulses if the result is HI for more
than one clock cycle.

Fig.4 Sequence generator module and block diagram

An external clock signal must be provided to operate the SEQUENCE GENERATOR. This
may be sinusoidal or TTL: separate input sockets are used.

Fig.5 The frequency Counter

Frequency counter mode Gate time selection of 0.1s, 1s or 10s with reading in kHz
 Fig.3 Macro Model of BER in TIMs
Also for convenience TIMS also has a special module that has all the BER
instrument function compact in a single module

 Experiment Procedure
1. First Step is to get all the necessary blocks of Tim’s model
that were going to use. The error counting utilities,
sequence generator, and a wideband true RMS.
2. Then connect the models based on the given model
diagram of the experiment.
3. The decoded sequence is also came from the sequence
generator so a second one is needed to conduct this
4. After connecting all blocks with each other and setting the
sequence generator next part is to the frequency counter
5. After setting up all the system
6. Remove the noise from the channel
7. Align the two sequence, to do this momentarily connect the
reset of the instrumentation sequence generator to the
output of the XOR gate of the error counting utilities.
8. Press the reset of the counter, were no digits should be
displaying
9. Press the TRIG button of the ERROR COUNTING UTILITIES
module.
10. Always remember to remove the noise before attempting
to align the two sequence.
Data and Results:

Fig,3 Laboratory setup

Fig.4 Input 1 vs Output

Fig.5 Input 2 vs Output

Fig.6 Input signal with noise vs Input signal without noise

Fig.7 The Input signal (Teal) vs outputsignal (purple)

Fig.8 Input vs Output signal with added noise

Fig.9 The count of errors after the LED of the error counting utilities goes
off.
Interpretation of Data
This design of experiment focuses on bit error rate or BER instruments.
The bit error rate (BER) is a metric which can be employed to characterize
the performance of a communication system or simply it is commonly used
for performance analysis for communication system. The number of bit
error is the number of received bits of data stream over communication
channel that is change due to the different factors such as noise,
interference or in distortion.
In this experiment we used error counting utilities, this module
provides two independent functional blocks, which can be conjunction with
other TIMS modules, it can be used to carry out bit error rate measurements.
The two blocks are an exclusive-OR (XOR) gate use for comparing the two
digital streams and in the lower part is the precise mono-stable for gating
a pulse counter. In the input of X-OR, we use sequence generator because this
module provides independent random sequence or sinusoidal (TTL).
The input sequence is differentiating by error bit error (BER) using
error counting utilities and the output is connected in Frequency Counter. We
also try to put noise generator connected to the other sequence generator to
observe what happen to the output of the bit error rate (BER). In our
observation, the bit error occurred during the communication process. Also
as we observed, once the noise increases, the number of bit error also
increase. Therefore the bit error ratio or the output of Frequency Counter is
proportionally increased. Ideally, it is better to have bit error ratio closes
to the value of zero, because it has less error to be transmit.
Conclusion:
As for the said experiment entitled “BER INSTRUMENTATION” wherein the

measurement of the bit error rate or BER is done with the modules of the

TIMS namely the sequence generator, error counting utilities, an optional

module of noise generator, and the frequency counter. Two sequence

generators were then used and was then fed to the error counting and the

number of error bits count would be displayed on the frequency counter. The

counts or the outputs seen in the frequency counter is the result of the XOR in

the error counting utilities, wherein the output is from the comparison of

the outputs of the two different sequence generator. Additional error

would be counted when the error generator would be fed along in either of

the feed of the sequence generator.