BER / Q Factors / Eye Diagrams BER / Q-Factors / Eye Diagrams

Bit Error Rate (BER) A figure of merit for a transmission system is the
i d BER received BER.
At the receiver, the transmitted data must be recovered with an
acceptable bit error rate (BER).
The required BER for high-speed optical communication systems today
is in the range of 10
9
to 10
15
, with a typical value of 10
12
.
A BER of 10
12
corresponds to one allowed bit error for every terabit of p y
data transmitted on average over a high-speed optical communication link.
The minimum requirement for the optical communication link BER is
10
9
. 10 .
The BER is measured against received
optical in optical communication links.
The measurements in the real world can be The measurements in the real world can be
done by using Bit Error Rate Testing (BERT)
Systems.
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BER / Q Factors / Eye Diagrams BER / Q-Factors / Eye Diagrams
Q-Factor Its a parameter that define the figure of merit in
i ti t communication systems.
The Q-factor predicts the probability of bit errors by measuring the
received signal strength and noise level rather than by counting actual
errors.
The Q-factor of an eye diagram can be estimated by:
Where
0
and
1
are the mean values
of the zeros and ones, and
0
and
are their standard deviation at the
1
are their standard deviation at the
sampling time.

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Return to zero data
eye diagram shown
BER / Q Factors / Eye Diagrams BER / Q-Factors / Eye Diagrams
The relationship between the Q-factor and the systems BER is defined
bby:
The Q-factor given above is a unit-less
quantity expressed in linear ratio, or it can q y p
be expressed in decibels as 20 log(Q).
The relationship between the Q-factor
And BER is shown in Figure which And BER is shown in Figure which
defines a convenient relationship that
a BER of 10
-9
corresponds to a
Q-factor of 6 (or 15 6dB) Q-factor of 6 (or 15.6dB)
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BER / Q Factors / Eye Diagrams BER / Q-Factors / Eye Diagrams
Eye diagrams: Eye diagrams are a very successful way of quickly and
i t iti l i th lit f di it l i l i th ti l intuitively assessing the quality of a digital signal in the optical
communication link.
A properly constructed eye should contain every possible bit sequence
from simple 101s and 010s.
Common ways of characterizing an eye are to measure the rise times,
fall times, jitter at the middle of the crossing point of the eye. , j g p y
The overshoot present and many other numerical descriptions of eye
behaviour in order to compare devices being measured.
High-speed oscilloscopes are used to generate eye diagrams after the High speed oscilloscopes are used to generate eye diagrams after the
receiver.
A trigger signal is also required for the generation of eye-diagrams
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BER / Q Factors / Eye Diagrams BER / Q-Factors / Eye Diagrams
An eye diagram generated with full rate clock trigger An eye-diagram generated with full rate clock trigger
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