Patent ID: 7835473

Claim:
A method of determining a metric for evaluating an error probability of a data frame comprising: receiving, at a radio receiving device, the data frame encoded according to a coding method and transmitted through a radio communication channel by a radio transmitting device, the data frame comprising a plurality of symbols; performing a channel equalization of the data frame received at the radio receiving device to produce a channel equalized data frame; performing a symbol de-mapping of symbols in the channel equalized data frame to produce a de-mapped data frame; obtaining soft bits based on the de-mapped data frame and characteristics of the coding method; calculating at least one intermediate value from a calculated mean and a calculated variance of a signal to interference plus noise ratios of the soft bits; and calculating a metric for evaluating the error probability of the data frame from the at least one intermediate value, the intermediate value having an order of two or greater and representing an equivalent communication channel for the soft bits, wherein evaluating the error probability includes consulting a table comprising different error probability values respectively associated to values of the metric, and the error probability includes a probability of frame error for a channel realization.