Effect of a Nonideal Regenerator Slicing Characteristic on the Error Rate of a Binary Pulse Transmission System

The nonideal slicing characteristics of pulse regenerators contribute to the error rate of a binary pulse transmission system. The slope at the center of the regenerator slicing characteristic and the tails of the characteristic have great effect on the error rate. In general, for a given signal-to-noise ratio, the steeper the slope of the slicing characteristic, the lower the error rate will be. The characteristics studied are symmetrical but different shapes are considered. The results have been obtained by using computational models and are for base-band pulse transmission. To achieve a specified error rate, a regenerator slicing characteristic with a slope of 1.5 at the center requires an SNR that is about 4 db higher than that needed with an ideal slicer. Slicing characteristics with steeper slopes require smaller increases in the SNR. Slicing characteristics with slopes of 10 and higher can, for all practical purposes, be considered as ideal. In system studies, a nonideal regenerator can be replaced by an ideal regenerator and a proper penalty in the signal-to-noise ratio. For a given slicing characteristic, the signal-to-noise penalty is essentially independent of the SNR in the region of interest.