  In this paper the choice of the Bernoulli distribution as biased distribution
for importance sampling (IS) Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation of linear block codes
over binary symmetric channels (BSCs) is studied. Based on the analytical
derivation of the optimal IS Bernoulli distribution, with explicit calculation
of the variance of the corresponding IS estimator, two novel algorithms for
fast-simulation of linear block codes are proposed. For sufficiently high
signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) one of the proposed algorithm is SNR-invariant,
i.e. the IS estimator does not depend on the cross-over probability of the
channel. Also, the proposed algorithms are shown to be suitable for the
estimation of the error-correcting capability of the code and the decoder.
Finally, the effectiveness of the algorithms is confirmed through simulation
results in comparison to standard Monte Carlo method.
