Rapid bit-error-rate measurements of infrared communication systems

In this work, we develop a method for rapid bit-error-rate (BER) measurements to reduce testing time of infrared communication systems. This method is to increase the probability of errors occurring in the communication system, which are caused by adding some special signals, such as DC offset noise and additive white Gaussian noise, inside the transmitter. The measured results are used to estimate the BER of the IrDA device at normal operation. Additionally, the relationship between the BER and the confidence level is explored to support the proposed rapid measurement. In our practical measurements of IrDA at 115.2 Kbps, measurement time for each testing device can be reduced from 12 hours to 1.45 seconds with a reduction of around 10⁵ times. The proposed rapid measurement system has been successfully developed and can be easily applied to measure various optical communication systems at a low set-up cost.