BER for AWGN channel with BPSK

February 6, 2012

The Task is to nd the performance of Bit Error Rate (BER) with Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation scheme in Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel. The system model is
y (n) = x(n) + w(n)

where x(n) is the transmitted symbol sequence and w(n) is the white Gaussian noise sequence with zero mean and variance 2 . Write Matlab code for computing the bit error rate with BPSK modulation from theory and simulation. The steps are: 1. Generate an N length vector x of BPSK symbols (+1 and -1). Let N = 107 . 2. For the given SNR value, nd the variance 2 assuming the signal energy to be 1. Generate the N -length Gaussian noise vector w with mean 0 and standard deviation . 3. The received signal is y = x + w. 4. Estimate the transmitted symols as x =
+1 y > 0 1 y 0

5. Count the number of errors and nd the probability of bit error as the ratio of the number of errors to the total number of symbols transmitted. 6. Repeat the same for multiple SNR values (in the range -6dB to 10 dB, in steps of 2 dB). Plot the BER vs. SNR curve. 7. Derive the expression for the probability of error theoretically, and verify whether the simulation result matches with it.

References
[1] J. Proakis,

Digital Communication, section 5.2.1

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