Forward Error Correction Solutions – ABCs of Bit Error Rate Testers

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Adding redundancy bits to the transmitted information using an algorithm achieves forward error correction. A redundant bit may be a complex function of many original bits. A simplistic example of FEC is to transmit each data bit three times.

An error in any one of the three samples is corrected by what you could call a “majority vote.” This triple modular redundancy above is widely used, but it is a somewhat inefficient form of FEC. Efficient FEC codes typically examine the last several dozen or several hundred bits received and then determine how to decode a small handful of bits (typically in groups of two to eight bits).