And there we have our answer – the correct term is Bit Error Ratio. However, BER is commonly referred to as Bit Error Rate, referring to the number of bit errors per unit time, which you can see is not the same as the equation above. In digital transmission, the number of bit errors is the number of received bits of a data stream over a communication channel that have been altered due to noise, interference, distortion or bit synchronization errors. This measured ratio is affected by many factors including signal to noise. For rigorous Rx testing, a PG (pattern generator) coupled with an ED (error detector) is required to perform BER testing. So, if your PG sends 10 bits to the. A bit error occurs when a single binary digit is flipped during transmission, meaning a logical '0' is mistakenly interpreted as a '1' by the receiver, or a '1' is read as a '0'.
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