Glossary
Technology evolves at a rapid-fire pace. That’s why we’ve built an easy-to-use glossary to help you better understand the terms, technologies and trends that impact your business.Forward Error Correction (FEC)
What is forward error correction?
Forward error correction (FEC) is a method of detecting and correcting errors in transmitted data without requiring the receiver to request retransmission. It works by adding redundant information to the transmitted data, allowing the receiver to recover data affected by transmission errors.
FEC is widely used in high-speed Ethernet and optical communications to help maintain reliable data transmission as signaling rates increase and signal margins become tighter.
Why is FEC important?
At higher data rates, transmission errors can occur because of noise, signal degradation and other impairments. FEC helps correct these errors before they affect the transmitted data, improving link reliability and extending usable transmission performance.
For high-speed interfaces such as 800G and 1.6T, engineers may evaluate pre-FEC and post-FEC performance, block error ratio (BLER) and, in some applications, multiple layers of FEC to better understand link performance.
Learn more
- Why BLER monitoring matters for 1.6T transceiver testing
- 1.6T testing: Validate FEC and monitor Block Error Rate (BLER) with the BA-1600