Physical AWGN channel emulator for Bit Error Rate Test of digital baseband communication

This paper presents a physical channel emulator solution for applications such as Bit Error Rate Testing of Error Correcting Codes. The solution relies on an analog White Gaussian Noise Generator coupled additively with an analog data signal to emulate the communication channel. This is interfaced to a computer through a USB connection, allowing the use of programs in different environments, such as Matlab and Labview. This solution can allow different types of channels to be emulated and with different noise sources. A software-based method to measure Signal to Noise Ratio and to characterize the channel is also presented. The system has been validated using a Matlab interface implementing multiple error correcting codes and showed good agreement with the theoretical model.