Described are systems and methods of estimating a Signal-to-Noise (S/N) ratio of an input channel carrying a QAM signal. A Modulation Error Ratio (MER) is calculated for the input QAM signal, but uses only the centermost error values of a constellation of the input QAM signal in generating this modified MER. The modified MER accurately represents the S/N ratio of the input channel carrying the QAM signal. In this way the S/N ratio may be accurately determined using only the received I and Q components of the modulated QAM input signal itself.