A BER model for turbo codes on AWGN channel

Bit error rate (BER) characteristics are researched in this paper under the influence caused by the channel codec and wireless channel statistic. Using mathematic tools such as curve fitting etc., an empirical model on BER is derived on the basis of extensive experiments. The channel model used is additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Turbo codes are used in channel coding. Using this model, the BER performance in receiver end can be estimated in sender end given certain channel statistic and parameter set. Experiments demonstrate that this model can describe the actual performance of turbo codes with high accuracy, with an average error around 3%, thus can be used in joint source-channel coding and end-to-end rate-distortion optimization.