Method for testing the error ratio of a device

Method for testing the Error Ratio BER of a device against a maximal allowable Error Ratio BERlimit with an early pass criterion, whereby the early pass criterion is allowed to be wrong only by a small probability D1, with the following steps

• measuring ns bits of the output of the device, thereby detecting ne erroneous bits of these ns bits,
• assuming that the likelihood distribution giving the distribution of the number of erroneous bits ni in a fixed number of samples of bits is PD(NE,ni), wherein NE is the average number of erroneous bits, obtaining PDhigh from
• 6 D 1 = ∫ 0 n ⁢ ⁢ e ⁢ PD high ⁡ ( NE high , ni ) ⁢ ⅆ ni
• wherein PDhigh is the worst possible likelihood distribution containing the measured ne erroneous bits with the probability D1,
• obtaining the average number of erroneous bits NEhigh for the worst possible likelihood distribution PDhigh,
• comparing NEhigh with NElimit=BERlimit·ns,
• if NElimit is higher than NEhigh stopping the test and deciding that the device has early passed the test and
• if NElimit is smaller than NEhigh continuing the test whereby increasing ns.