Bit error rate
Another important characteristic of data transmission is the Bit error rate (BER). BER refers to the number of bit errors received over a communication channel. BER is a unitless measurement expressed as a ratio or percentage. For example:
If an original transmission sequence is: 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0
And the received sequence is: 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 (differences in bold)
Then the BER is 5 errors / 10 bits transferred = 50%
BER is affected by channel noise, interference, multipath fading, and attenuation. Techniques to improve BER include increasing transmission power, improving receiver sensitivity, using less dense/lower order modulation techniques, or adding more redundant data. The last technique is typically referred to ...
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