Error performance analysis in concatenated digital transmission systems by two-layered modeling

A two-layered model is proposed in this study to describe the error generating process of each component link in a concatenated digital transmission system. The first layer models the arrivals of physical impairments as a continuous time Poisson process. Each occurrence of a physical impairment yields a cluster of errors. The second layer describes the statistics of the intra-structure of each error cluster in discrete time. According to the nature of physical impairments, the length of an error cluster has a general probability distribution and is independent and identically distributed variable. Within an error cluster, the bit errors are generated according to a sequence of Bernoulli trials, This mixed-type description facilitates the evaluation of both global and local information regarding the error performance of the overall concatenated transmission system.<>