ENGG*3210 Communication Systems

Lab Three
Bit Error Rate in AWGN Channels
Group 1
Shirley Javier
Jan Wichanski
February 4th, 2015

Objectives
The three goals of this lab are: to learn the basic stages
in a practical communications system (transmitter, channel,
receiver), to understand the concept of the bit error rate
(BER) in a system as a function of signal to noise ratio (SNR),
and to simulate a basic communication system and measure
the BER.
Results
The system was implemented using this block diagram
on Simulink:

Figure 1: Block Diagram for Communication System

A binary data stream of 64 kbps was generated with a

polar NRZ code (using the Unipolar to Bipolar Converter
block), and some noise was added through the AWGN
block. Then, this signal was passed through a threshold
receiver to be able to recreate the signal, and decode the
symbols into binary data. Finally, the BER was calculated
using different SNR values (from 0-12dB) in order to see
what differences these levels make in the bit error rate.
Figures 2-4 demonstrate the stages that the binary
input was passed through, including before noise
(transmitter), after noise (channel), and after reconstruction
(receiver).

Figures 2-4: Different Stages of Communication System

The bit error rate (BER) in this experiment is
represented as a three-element vector, consisting of: the
error rate, the number of errors detected, and the number of
symbols compared. In practical systems, the BER is the
number of bit error divided by the number of transferred bits
during a studied time interval. It is often expressed as a
ratio, or a percentage.
The signal-to-noise ratio, in communications systems, is
defined as a comparison of the level of a desired signal to
the level of background noise. It is expressed as a ratio of
signal to noise power in decibels (dB).
By changing the SNR in this laboratory, the effects of
this ratio on the BER can be expressed.
The table below is an output of the BER at different SNR
levels:
SNR

Error Rate

0
1
2

0.1570
0.1294
0.0995

# Errors
Detected
1005
828
637

Symbols
Compared
6401
6401
6401

3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

0.0772
0.0548
0.0398
0.0242
0.0136
0.0067
0.0022
0.0016
4.6868e-04
1.5623e-04

494
351
255
155
87
43
14
10
3
1

6401
6401
6401
6401
6401
6401
6401
6401
6401
6401

Table 1: SNR Value Outputs

As seen on this table, the signal-to-noise ratio
demonstrated a negative correlation to the bit error rate in
the communication system. It can be shown that a higher
SNR proves to be desirable due to the lower number of
errors and a more accurate reconstruction of the original
signal.
Conclusion
This experiment was a more concrete demonstration of
the importance of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in a
communications system, specifically in relation to the bit
error rate (BER). In order to reproduce an input signal, it is
important to create a channel that is able to separate the
input accurately from any given noise.