Assessing operating conditions of a receiver in a communication network based on forward error correction decoding properties
A system is configured to measure a forward error correction (FEC) decoding property associated with applying FEC decoding to FEC-encoded bits or symbols at a receiver device deployed in a communication network. The system is further configured to provide an assessment of operating conditions of the receiver device based on the FEC decoding property. In one example, the FEC decoding property comprises a distribution of a number of iterations of a FEC decoding operation applied to a plurality of FEC blocks processed within a period of time. In some examples, the FEC decoding property comprises any one of heat, temperature, current, voltage, active clock cycles, idle clock cycles, activity of parallel engines, activity of pipeline stages, and input or output buffer fill level of the FEC decoding. In some examples, the assessment is based on a comparison between the FEC decoding property and reference FEC data.
1. An electronic device comprising:
circuitry configured to store a measured forward error correction (FEC) iteration distribution of a number of iterations of a FEC decoding operation applied to each of a plurality of FEC blocks processed, within a period of time, at a receiver device deployed in a communication network, each FEC block consisting of FEC-encoded bits or symbols encoded using a FEC encoding operation corresponding to the FEC decoding operation; and
circuitry configured to store a series of reference FEC iteration distributions, each reference FEC iteration distribution comprising a distribution of a number of iterations of the FEC decoding operation applied to FEC blocks under different predefined noise conditions; and
circuitry configured to calculate, based on the measured FEC iteration distribution and the series of reference FEC iteration distributions, an estimate of a noise distribution over the plurality of FEC blocks prior to application of the FEC decoding operation.
2. The electronic device as claimed in claim 1 , further comprising
circuitry configured to calculate a trial FEC iteration distribution by combining a trial noise distribution having trial parameters with the series of reference FEC iteration distributions; and
circuitry configured to calculate the estimate of the noise distribution by determining the trial parameters which minimize a difference between the trial FEC iteration distribution and the measured FEC iteration distribution.
3. The electronic device as claimed in claim 1 , further comprising
circuitry configured to calculate a modified noise distribution based on the estimate of the noise distribution and an additional predefined noise distribution; and
circuitry configured to calculate a predicted FEC iteration distribution based on the modified noise distribution and the series of reference FEC iteration distributions.
4. The electronic device as claimed in claim 3 , further comprising
circuitry configured to provide an assessment of a predicted change in operating conditions of the receiver device based on the predicted FEC iteration distribution; and
circuitry configured to initiate a change in one or more parameters of the communication network based on the assessment.
5. An electronic device comprising:
circuitry configured to store a test noise distribution over a plurality of FEC blocks, each FEC block consisting of FEC-encoded bits or symbols encoded using a FEC encoding operation;
circuitry configured to store a series of reference FEC iteration distributions, each reference FEC iteration distribution comprising a distribution of a number of iterations of a FEC decoding operation applied to FEC blocks under different predefined noise conditions, the FEC decoding operation corresponding to the FEC encoding operation; and
circuitry configured to calculate a predicted FEC iteration distribution based on the test noise distribution and the series of reference FEC iteration distributions.
6. The electronic device as claimed in claim 5 , further comprising
circuitry configured to provide an assessment of predicted operating conditions of a receiver device based on the predicted FEC iteration distribution.
7. The electronic device as claimed in claim 6 , further comprising
circuitry configured to initiate a change in one or more parameters of a communication network based on the assessment.