2013 Introduction to Communication Project Report

Variations of Bit Error Rate (BER) for different values of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)
Saifullah Khan, Ramin Ghaznavi Youvalari Faculty of Computing and Electrical Engineering Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland ramin.ghaznavi@tut.fi, saif.khan@student.tut.fi
Abstract-The purpose of this project is to study the variations of the bit-error-rate (BER) for different values of signal to noise ratio (SNR) for a simple communication system with just Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). The project is divided into two parts. In the first part the response is studied for a simple random bit sequence. After that it is studied for a real audio file. The response is studied for different modulation techniques of BPSK, 4-PAM and 8-PAM. MATLAB environment is used as a simulator.
Index Terms AWGN, SNR, BER, BPSK, 4-PAM, 8-PAM

as ten to a negative power. For example, a transmission might have a BER of 10-6 which means that out of 1,000,000 transmitted one was erroneous. C. Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) It is a channel model in which the only impairment to communication is a linear addition of wideband or white noise with a constant spectral density and a Gaussian distribution of amplitude. D. Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) Phase shift keying is a method of digital communication in which the phase of a transmitted signal is varied to convey information. The simplest PSK technique is called binary phase shift keying (BPSK). It uses two opposite signal phases (0 and 180 degrees). E. Bit-to-Symbol Mapping In this process the binary values are converted to symbols using various modulation techniques discussed below. a. Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM) In pulse amplitude modulation(PAM), the amplitude of series of constant width pulses is varied in proportional to sample values of message signal. b. 4-PAM It is a two-bit modulator which will take two bits at a time and will map the signal amplitude to one of four possible levels, e.g. -3,-1,1,3 [2]. c. 8-PAM It is a two bit modulator which will take two bits at a time and will map the signal amplitude to one of eight possible levels [3].

I.

INTRODUCTION

Digital Communication systems are becoming increasingly attractive because of the ever growing demand for data communication and because digital transmission offers data processing options and flexibilities not available with analog transmission. Principle feature of a digital communication system is that during a finite interval of time, it sends a waveform from a finite set of possible waveforms [1]. In this section we will write about the theoretical background of the transmission and reception of an audio signal. We will also discuss about the various parameters that effect the performance of a digital communication system such as SNR and BER. Some mathematical evidence will also be provided. Initially we define some basic concepts. A. Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) Signal to Noise ratio is a measure used in communications engineering to quantify how much a signal has been corrupted by noise. It is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power corrupting the signal. Mathematically, it is defined as, SNR = 10log10 (1)

II.

METHOD OF IMPLEMENTATION

B. Bit Error Rate (BER) In communications systems bit error rate (BER) is the percentage of bits that have errors relative to the total number of bits received in a transmission usually expressed

The project was divided into two parts. Method of implementation is discussed below for each of them. A. System Model

In this part we created a simulation for the simple communication model shown below. We generated a simple random bit sequence such as, X[n]=[1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1] (2)

The variations in bit-error rate (BER) for different values of signal to noise ratio (SNR) for different modulation techniques is shown below.

We assumed that the channel was ideal so the only distortion caused was by AWGN. We also assumed that the bit sequence was ideally and independently distributed. Once the sequence was generated then we performed detection and demapped the sequence into bits. We compared the input and output sequences and calculated the BER. We simulated the channel for different modulation schemes such as BPSK, 4-PAM and 8-PAM and between the SNR values of -10 to 20 dB. After that we had a curve between SNR and BER.

Fig. 3. BER vs SNR for a System Model Fig. 1. System Block Diagram B. Audio Signal In this case we performed the simulation for a real audio file. The block diagram of the system is shown below, The curve for BER versus SNR shows that BPSK modulation scheme is the best of all the techniques. The reason is that in BPSK for a small value of SNR the bit error rate is approaching zero when compared to 4 PAM and 8 PAM. The above Fig. 3 can also be referred as a waterfall due to resemblance of the curves to waterfall. The relationship between signal to noise ratio and bit error rate from the above curve is found to be inverse. B. Simulation of a Real Audio File In this task we transmitted a real audio file using the 4 PAM bit to symbol mapping. We simulated the channel for values of signal to noise ratio between -10 to 20 dB. We could not hear anything except noise for SNR values between -10 5 dB. The audibility of the received signal was better for increased value of SNR. IV. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that this project provided an outlook of a basic communication system. It threw light on the basic concepts of communication such as noise, signal to noise ratio, bit error rate (BER) and also the various bit to symbol mapping techniques. We also studied the relationship between the bit error rate and signal to noise ratio for the various bit to symbol mapping techniques. The relationship was found by simulating the communication system for a sample bit sequence and then for a real audio file. Finally, we used 4 PAM to find the value of signal to noise ratio at which there was minimum noise in the received signal for a real audio file.

Fig. 2. Audio Signal Block Diagram We used the audioread function to read the audio file into MATLAB. Initially we had samples of the audio signal each of which we called a symbol. We converted the symbols or samples into binary form using the source encoder. This means that before transmitting each type of file whether image or audio must be converted to binary form. At the receiver end the source decoder performs the opposite operation and converts the binary into samples or symbols. We used a very simple encoding algorithm which converted the decimal value of the sample to binary form. After this we simulated the channel again for BPSK, 4PAM and 8-PAM and for SNR values of -10-20 dB. We detected the signal and demodulated it to get the binary form. From this we calculated BER and plotted it against SNR values. III. RESULTS

In this section we will show are results and findings for both the model system and audio file simulations.
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REFERENCES
Bernard Sklar, Digital Communications, Fundamentals and Applications, 2nd Edition J.S.Chitode, Communication Theory, Technical Publications, 2010

A. Model System
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Simon S. Haykin, Communication System, John Wiley & Sons, 1983