Error Rate Estimation Based on Soft Output Decoding and its Application to Turbo Coding

In this paper, we investigate reliable error rate estimation techniques for MAC layer adaptive mechanisms. In particular, we propose and analyze a novel error rate estimator based on soft output information available as output of receivers with turbo principle. Contrary to previous works on the subject, we relax the assumption of perfect knowledge of signal-noise-to-ratio (SNR) at the receiver, and we analyze the impact of a SNR estimation error on the error rate estimate. We show that, differently to previous techniques, the proposed estimation method is insensitive to such SNR estimation error. Our analytical and simulation results validate the conclusion.