Abstract

Bit error rate (BER) is an important performance measure for the evaluation of digital communications systems over a communication channel. Taking into consideration that packets transmitted through a physical medium may be affected by transmission channel noise, bit synchronization problems, attenuation, interference, wireless multipath fading, among others, is necessary to determine this measure in real conditions, in order to evaluate and improve the performance of the system. In this context, this paper presents an experimental methodology for the measurement of BER curves in the 2.4 GHz and 5.85 GHz bands, using Software Defined Radio (SDR) Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) and Systems Engineering Software LabVIEW. By determining the BER in realistic conditions, is possible to improve the modeling of the communication channel, allowing to design robust pulse shapes. In this way, the development of the proposed methodology will allow to measure the performance of different modulation techniques, and thus be able to contrast the theoretical performance versus the realistic performance of traditional and new digital communications systems.