Patent Document ID: 20060002460
Application ID: 10513909
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. Method for testing the Error Ratio BER of a device against a maximal allowable Error Ratio BER limit with an early pass criterion, whereby the early pass criterion is allowed to be wrong only by a small probability F 1 for the entire test, with the following steps measuring ns bits of the output of the device, thereby detecting ne erroneous bits of these ns bits, assuming that the likelihood distribution giving the distribution of the number of erroneous bits ni in a fixed number of samples of bits is PD(NE,ni), wherein NE is the average number of erroneous bits, obtaining PD high from D 1 = ∫ 0 ne ⁢ PD high ⁡ ( NE high , ni ) ⁢ ⁢ ⅆ ni wherein PD high is the worst possible likelihood distribution containing the measured ne erroneous bits with a single step wrong decision probability D 1 for a preliminary Error Ratio BER stage, whereby using a single step wrong decision probability D 1 smaller than the probability F 1 for the entire test, obtaining the average number of erroneous bits NE high for the worst possible likelihood distribution PD high , comparing NE high with NE limit =BER limit ·ns, if NE limit is higher than NE high stopping the test and deciding that the device has early passed the test and if NE limit is smaller than NE high continuing the test whereby increasing ns.