System and method to determine a bit error probability of received communications within a cellular wireless network

A wireless terminal that comprises:

• a Radio Frequency (RF) front end;
• a baseband processor communicatively coupled to the RF front end;
• an enCOder/DECoder (CODEC) processing module communicatively coupled to the baseband processor;
• wherein, the RF front end, the baseband processor, and the CODEC processing module are configured to:
• receive a RF burst from the a servicing base station;
• determine a signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the RF burst;
• extract a sequence of soft decisions from the RF burst;
• decode the sequence of soft decisions to produce a data block;
• determine whether decoding of the sequence of soft decisions was successful;
• re-encode the data block to produce a sequence of re-encoded decisions when the sequence of soft decisions decoded favorably;
• and
• compare the sequence of soft decisions to the sequence of re-encoded decisions to produce a re-encoded bit error (RBER);
• determine the Bit Error Probability (BEP) based on;
• when decoding is unsuccessful, an estimated BEP derived from the SNR;
• and
• when decoding is successful, the estimated BEP and the RBER;
• and
• report the BEP to a servicing base station.

A wireless terminal that comprises:

• a Radio Frequency (RF) front end;
• and
• a baseband processor communicatively coupled to the RF front end;
• wherein, the RF front end and the base band processor are configured to:
• receive the RF burst of the data frame from the servicing base station;
• determine a signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the RF burst;
• extract a sequence of soft decisions from the RF burst;
• decode the sequence of soft decisions to produce a data block;
• re-encode the data block to produce a sequence of re-encoded decisions when the sequence of soft decisions decoded favorably;
• and
• compare the sequence of soft decisions to the sequence of re-encoded decisions to produce a re-encoded bit error (RBER);
• determine the Bit Error Probability (BEP) based on:
• an estimated BEP derived from the SNR of the RF burst when the sequence of soft decisions decoded unfavorably;
• and
• the estimated BEP and the RBER when the sequence of soft decisions decoded favorably;
• and
• report the BEP to a servicing base station.

A method to determine a bit error probability (BEP) of received Radio Frequency (RF) burst(s) within a data frame received from a servicing base station by a wireless terminal in a cellular wireless communication system, the method comprising:

• receiving the RF burst of the data frame from the servicing base station;
• determining a signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the RF burst;
• extracting a sequence of soft decisions from the RF burst;
• decoding the sequence of soft decisions to produce a data block;
• re-encoding the data block to produce a sequence of re-encoded decisions when the sequence of soft decisions decoded favorably;
• comparing the sequence of soft decisions to the sequence of re-encoded decisions to produce a re-encoded bit error (RBER);
• determining the BEP based on an estimated BEP derived from the SNR of the RF burst and the RBER, wherein:
• the estimated BEP is weighed more heavily when the sequence of soft decisions decoded unfavorably;
• the RBER corresponds to the sequence of soft decisions having a bit error rate (BER) exceeding a threshold value when the sequence of soft decisions decoded unfavorably;
• and
• the RBER is weighed more heavily when the sequence of soft decisions decoded favorably.