Physical Component Performance Degradation Detection based on Error Probability Analysis

The detection and diagnosis of physical layer faults at system level in communications systems remains problematic. This paper presents a cross layer fault detection scheme, suitable for implementation at higher levels in a communications system, with the ability to detect and diagnose the cause of physical layer failure which results in impaired performance. It is based on the distribution of symbol error frequency and the probability of error of the underlying modulation scheme used in the communications system. With this knowledge, a simple counting algorithm is proposed as a diagnostic tool to implement the methodology.