Turbo decoder assisted frame error rate estimation

In modern digital communication systems, quality of service is specified in terms of average frame error rates (FER). Accurate and fast estimation of the FER is thus a crucial element of these power control or adaptive systems. This paper proposes an accurate and fast FER estimation method for any receivers equipped with iterative processors and the ability to stop the iterative processing early. Based on the observation that the average number of processing iterations is strongly correlated to the operating FER, the proposed method estimates the FER through the average number of actual processing iterations. As confirmed by extensive simulation results, the proposed estimation algorithm is much more accurate and responsive to changing operating conditions than traditional methods.