Bit-Error-Rate measurement of infrared physical channel using reflection via Multi Layer Insulation inside in ARIANE 5 Vehicle Equipment Bay for wireless sensor network communication

Abstract

In this work we investigate the Bit-Error-Rate (BER) of the Infrared (Ir) Communication inside the Vehicle Equipment Bay (VEB) of the ARIANE 5. Measurements were performed to find the impact of the reflection of the infrared signal via Multi Layer Insulation (MLI) on the infrared wireless sensor network (Ir WSN) communication in the VEB. The main focus is to find the relationship between the BER and the transmitting/receiving angle depending on variation of the Ir transmitter power. A further experiment was done by varying the transmission current with a constant angle for BER estimation without adding extra special signals (e.g. Additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN)) to the transmitter. Ambient white light from LEDs and 50 Hz fluorescent AC light was superimposed in the measurement to introduce additional noise for the infrared receiver into the physical channel.