Abstract: The present disclosure includes a discussion of a bit error rate detection method for use in a digital radio communication system. The digital radio communication system contains multiple radios which transmit and receive radio frequency (RF) signals. The RF signals are formatted into multiple frames, each frame has a predetermined number of data bits, a subset of which have known values. A first frame of data is transmitted. The first frame is received and the subset of known data bits are extracted. Each data bit of the received subset of known data bits are compared to the known set of data bits and a counter is incremented in response to each comparison which results in difference between the received bit and the set of known bits. The counter value is used to determine a bit error rate of the received first frame at a predetermined confidence level.