An APD-Based Evaluation on the Effect of Transient Disturbance over Digital Transmission

In railway electromagnetic environment, transient disturbances usually degenerate the function of railway wireless communication systems, thus may cause severe security issues. To protect communication services, measurement methodology to characterize disturbances keeps evolving. Nowadays, the statistical characteristics of disturbances, such as Amplitude probability distribution (APD), have been proven more efficient to assess the degradation of digital transmission than Quasipeak detection in most Electromagnetic Compatibility standards. To demonstrate the impact of disturbances on error performance more precisely, a more refined method to estimate Bit error probability (BEP) of digital modulation is necessary. The APD value is ideally obtained with the equivalent bandwidth of the radio service under threat, which means specific apparatus of certain radio service is consequently indispensable. This paper proposes a novel method to estimate the maximum BEP of multilevel amplitude modulations based on APD acquired by standard apparatus. The calculated BEP also provides reference for APD emission restriction.