LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

TERM PAPER
OF
(ECE-304)
DIGITAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
ON
CHANNEL FADING AND CHANNEL
EQUALIZATION

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

Mr. Gagandeep Singh Walia Saurav Singh
R B 6703 B 64
3460070065

ABSTRACT: representation Frequency-selective time-

This demonstration illustrates the
application of adaptive filters to channel
equalization in digital communications.
Channel equalization is a simple way of
mitigating the detrimental effects caused by
a frequency-selective and/or dispersive
communication link between sender and
receiver. For this demonstration, all signals
are assumed to have a digital baseband
varying fading causes a cloudy pattern to
appear on a spectrogram. Time is shown on
the horizontal axis, frequency on the vertical
axis and signal strength as grey-scale
intensity. In wireless
communications, fading is deviation of
the attenuation that a carrier-modulated
telecommunication signal experiences over
certain propagation media. The fading may
vary with time, geographical position and/or
radio frequency, and is often modelled as
a random process. A fading channel is a
communication channel that experiences
fading. In wireless systems, fading may
either be due to multipath propagation,
referred to as multipath induced fading, or
due to shadowing from obstacles affecting
the wave propagation, sometimes
referred to as shadow fading.
Fading:
In wireless communications, fading is
deviation of the attenuation that a carrier-
modulated telecommunication signal
experiences over certain propagation media.
The fading may vary with time,
geographical position and/or radio
frequency, and is often modelled as a
random process. A fading channel is a
communication channel that experiences
fading. In wireless systems, fading may
either be due to multipath propagation,
referred to as multipath induced fading, or
due to shadowing from obstacles affecting
the wave propagation, sometimes referred to
as shadow fading.
Slow versus fast fading:
The terms slow and fast fading refer to the
rate at which the magnitude and phase
change imposed by the channel on the signal
changes. The coherence time is a measure of
the minimum time required for the
magnitude change of the channel to become
uncorrelated from its previous value.
• Slow fading arises when the
coherence time of the channel is
large relative to the delay constraint
of the channel. In this regime, the
amplitude and phase change imposed
by the channel can be considered
roughly constant over the period of
use. Slow fading can be caused by
events such as shadowing, where a
large obstruction such as a hill or
large building obscures the main
signal path between the transmitter
and the receiver. The amplitude
change caused by shadowing is often
modeled using a log-normal
distribution with a standard deviation
according to the log-distance path
loss model.
• Fast fading occurs when the
coherence time of the channel is
small relative to the delay constraint
of the channel. In this regime, the
amplitude and phase change imposed
by the channel varies considerably
over the period of use.
In a fast-fading channel, the transmitter may
take advantage of the variations in the
channel conditions using time diversity to
help increase robustness of the
communication to a temporary deep fade.
Although a deep fade may temporarily erase
some of the information transmitted, use of
an error-correcting code coupled with
successfully transmitted bits during other
time instances (interleaving) can allow for
the erased bits to be recovered. In a slow-
fading channel, it is not possible to use time
diversity because the transmitter sees only a
single realization of the channel within its
delay constraint. A deep fade therefore lasts
the entire duration of transmission and
cannot be mitigated using coding.
Flat versus frequency-selective fading:
As the carrier frequency of a signal is
varied, the magnitude of the change in
amplitude will vary. The coherence
bandwidth measures the separation in
frequency after which two signals will
experience uncorrelated fading.
• In flat fading, the coherence
bandwidth of the channel is larger
than the bandwidth of the signal.
Therefore, all frequency components
of the signal will experience the
same magnitude of fading.
• In frequency-selective fading, the
coherence bandwidth of the channel
is smaller than the bandwidth of the
signal. Different frequency
components of the signal therefore
experience decorrelated fading.
Since different frequency components of the
signal are affected independently, it is
highly unlikely that all parts of the signal
will be simultaneously affected by a deep
fade. Certain modulation schemes such as
OFDM and CDMA are well-suited to
employing frequency diversity to provide
robustness to fading. OFDM divides the
wideband signal into many slowly
modulated narrowband subcarriers, each
exposed to flat fading rather than frequency
selective fading. This can be combated by
means of error coding, simple equalization
or adaptive bit loading. Inter-symbol
interference is avoided by introducing a
guard interval between the symbols. CDMA
uses the Rake receiver to deal with each
echo separately.
Frequency-selective fading channels are also
dispersive, in that the signal energy
associated with each symbol is spread out in
time. This causes transmitted symbols that
are adjacent in time to interfere with each
other. Equalizers are often deployed in such
channels to compensate for the effects of the
intersymbol interference.
Fading models:
Examples of fading models for the
distribution of the attenuation are:
• Nakagami fading
• Weibull fading
• Rayleigh fading
• Rician fading
• Dispersive fading models, with
several echoes, each exposed to
different delay, gain and phase shift,
often constant. This results in
frequency selective fading and inter-
symbol interference. The gains may
be Rayleigh or Rician distributed.
The echoes may also be exposed to
Doppler shift, resulting in a time
varying channel model.
• Log-normal shadow fading
Rayleigh fading:
Rayleigh fading is a statistical model for the
effect of a propagation environment on a
radio signal, such as that used by wireless
devices. Rayleigh fading models assume that
the magnitude of a signal that has passed
through such a transmission medium (also
called a communications channel) will vary
randomly, or fade, according to a Rayleigh
distribution — the radial component of the
sum of two uncorrelated Gaussian random
variables.
Rayleigh fading is viewed as a reasonable
model for tropospheric and ionospheric
signal propagation as well as the effect of
heavily built-up urban environments on
radio signals.[1][2] Rayleigh fading is most
applicable when there is no dominant
propagation along a line of sight between
the transmitter and receiver. If there is a
dominant line of sight, Rician fading may be
more applicable.
Properties:
Since it is based on a well-studied
distribution with special properties, the
Rayleigh distribution lends itself to analysis,
and the key features that affect the
performance of a wireless network have
analytic expressions.
Note that the parameters discussed here are
for a non-static channel. If a channel is not
changing with time, clearly it does not fade
and instead remains at some particular level.
Separate instances of the channel in this case
will be uncorrelated with one another owing
to the assumption that each of the scattered
components fades independently. Once
relative motion is introduced between any of
the transmitter, receiver and scatterers, the
fading becomes correlated and varying in
time.
Generating Rayleigh fading:
As described above, a Rayleigh fading
channel itself can be modelled by generating
the real and imaginary parts of a complex
number according to independent normal
Gaussian variables. However, it is
sometimes the case that it is simply the
amplitude fluctuations that are of interest
(such as in the figure shown above). There
are two main approaches to this. In both
cases, the aim is to produce a signal which
has the Doppler power spectrum given
above and the equivalent autocorrelation
properties.
Rician fading:
Rician fading is a stochastic model for radio
propagation anomaly caused by partial
cancellation of a radio signal by itself — the
signal arrives at the receiver by two different
paths (hence exhibiting multipath
interference), and at least one of the paths is
changing (lengthening or shortening). Rician
fading occurs when one of the paths,
typically a line of sight signal, is much
stronger than the others. In Rician fading,
the amplitude gain is characterized by a
Rician distribution.
Rayleigh fading is the specialised model for
stochastic fading when there is no line of
sight signal, and is sometimes considered as
a special case of the more generalised
concept of Rician fading. In Rayleigh
fading, the amplitude gain is characterized
by a Rayleigh distribution
The model behind Rician fading is similar
to that for Rayleigh fading, except that in
Rician fading a strong dominant component
is present. This dominant component can for
instance be the line-of-sight wave. Refined
Rician models also consider that
 • that the dominant wave can be a
phasor sum of two or more dominant
signals, e.g. the line-of-sight, plus a
ground reflection. This combined
signal is then mostly treated as a
deterministic (fully predictable)
process, and that
• the dominant wave can also be
subject to shadow attenuation. This
is a popular assumption in the
modelling of satellite channels.
Besides the dominant component, the
mobile antenna receives a large number of
reflected and scattered waves.
Rician Channels:
Examples of Rician fading are found in
• Microcellular channels
• Vehicle to Vehicle communication,
e.g., for AVCS
• Indoor propagation
• Satellite channels
Scales of Fading:
 Large scale Fading
 Small Scale Fading

Small Scale Fading Types:

 Frequency selective fading

 Flat fading

 Fast fading

Frequency Selective fading:

Phasor Diagram of Rician fading signal

Rician factor:
The Rician K-factor is defined as the ratio of
signal power in dominant component over
the (local-mean) scattered power. In the
expression for the received signal, the power
in the line-of-sight equals C2/2. In indoor
channels with an unobstructed line-of-sight
between transmit and receive antenna the K- Selective fading causes a "cloudy" pattern to
factor is between, say, 4 and 12 dB. appear on a spectrogram display.
Rayleigh fading is recovered for K = 0 (-
infinity dB). Selective fading or frequency selective
fading is a radio propagation anomaly
caused by partial cancellation of a radio
signal by itself — the signal arrives at the
receiver by two different paths, and at least
one of the paths is changing (lengthening or
shortening). This typically happens in the
early evening or early morning as the
various layers in the ionosphere move,
separate, and combine. The two paths can
both be skywave or one be groundwave.
Selective fading manifests as a slow, cyclic
disturbance; the cancellation effect, or
"null", is deepest at one particular
frequency, which changes constantly,
sweeping through the received audio.
The effect can be counteracted by applying
some diversity scheme, for example OFDM
(with subcarrier interleaving and forward
error correction), or by using two receivers
with separate antennas spaced a quarter-
wavelength apart, or a specially-designed
diversity receiver with two antennas. Such a
receiver continuously compares the signals
arriving at the two antennas and presents the
better signal.
Flat fading:
If the mobile radio channel has a constant
gain and linear phase response over a
bandwidth
which is greater than the bandwidth of the
transmitted signal, then the received signal
will
undergo flat fading. This type of fading is
historically the most common type of fading
described
in the technical literature. In flat fading, the
multipath structure of the channel is such
that the
spectral characteristics of the transmitted
signal are preserved at the receiver.
However the
strength of the received signal changes with
time, due to fluctuations in the gain of the
channel
caused by multipath. The characteristics of a
flat fading channel are illustrated in Figure
5.12.
It can be seen from Figure 5.12 that if the
channel gain changes over time, a change of
amplitude occurs in the received signal.
Over time, the received signal r(t) varies in
gain, but
the spectrum of the transmission is
preserved. In a flat fading channel, the
reciprocal bandwidth
of the transmitted signal is much larger than
the multipath time delay spread of the
channel, and can be approximated
as having no excess delay (i.e., a single delta
function with
Frequency Selective Fading:
If the channel possesses a constant-gain and
linear phase response over a bandwidth that
is
smaller than the bandwidth of transmitted
signal, then the channel creates frequency
selective
fading on the received signal. Under such
conditions, the channel impulse response has
a multipath delay spread which is greater
than the reciprocal bandwidth of the
transmitted message
waveform. When this occurs, the received
signal includes multiple versions of the
transmitted
waveform which are attenuated (faded) and
delayed in time, and hence the received
signal is distorted. Frequency selective
fading is due to time dispersion of the
transmitted symbols within the channel.
Thus the channel induces intersymbol
interference (ISI). Viewed in the frequency
domain, certain frequency components in
the received signal spectrum have greater
gains than
others. Frequency selective fading channels
are much more difficult to model than flat
fading
channels since each multipath signal must be
modeled and the channel must be considered
to be a linear filter. It is for this reason that
wideband multipath measurements are
made, and models are developed from these
measurements. When analyzing mobile
communication systems, statistical impulse
response models such as the two-ray
Rayleigh fading model (which considers the
impulse response to be made up of two delta
functions which independently fade and
have sufficient time delay between them to
induce frequency selective fading upon the
applied signal), or computer generated or
measured impulse responses, are generally
used for analyzing frequency selective
small-scale fading. Figure 5.13 illustrates
the characteristics of a frequency selective.
Equalization in Digital Communications
This demonstration illustrates the
application of adaptive filters to channel
equalization in digital communications.
Channel equalization is a simple way of
mitigating the detrimental effects caused by
a frequency-selective and/or dispersive
communication link between sender and
receiver. For this demonstration, all signals
are assumed to have a digital baseband
representation. During the training phase of
channel equalization, a digital signal s[n]
that is known to both the transmitter and
receiver is sent by the transmitter to the
receiver. The received signal x[n] contains
two signals: the signal s[n] filtered by the
channel impulse response, and an unknown
broadband noise signal v[n]. The goal is to
filter x[n] to remove the inter-symbol
interference (ISI) caused by the dispersive
channel and to minimize the effect of the
additive noise v[n]. Ideally, the output signal
would closely follow a delayed version of
the transmitted signal s[n].
The transmitted input signal s[n]:
A digital signal carries information through
its discrete structure. There are several
common baseband signaling methods. We
shall use a 16-QAM complex-valued symbol
set, in which the input signal takes one of
sixteen different values given by all possible
combinations of {-3, -1, 1, 3} + j*{-3, -1, 1,
3}, where j = sqrt(-1). Let's generate a
sequence of 5000 such symbols, where each
one is equiprobable.
ntr = 5000;
j = sqrt(-1);
s =
sign(randn(1,ntr)).*(2+sign(randn(1,ntr)))
+j*sign(randn(1,ntr)).*(2+sign(randn(1,ntr))
);
plot(s,'o');
axis([-4 4 -4 4]);
axis('square');
xlabel('Re\{s(n)\}');
ylabel('Im\{s(n)\}');
title('Input signal constellation');
 Fig 1.2.1

The transmission channel: Fig.1.3.1

The transmission channel is defined by the % Frequency response

channel impulse response and the noise set(hFV, 'Analysis', 'freq')
characteristics. We shall choose a particular
channel that exhibits both frequency
selectivity and dispersion. The noise
variance is chosen so that the received
signal-to-noise ratio is 30 dB.

b = exp(j*pi/5)*[0.2 0.7 0.9];

a = [1 -0.7 0.4];
% Transmission channel filter
channel = dfilt.df2t(b,a);
Fig 1.3.2
% Impulse response
hFV = fvtool(channel,'Analysis','impulse');
The received signal x[n]:
legend(hFV, 'Transmission channel');
The received signal x[n] is the signal s[n]
filtered by the channel impulse response
with additive noise v[n]. We assume a
complex Gaussian noise signal for the
additive noise. sig =
sqrt(1/16*(4*18+8*10+4*2))/sqrt(1000)*no
rm(impz(channel));

v = sig*(randn(1,ntr) +
j*randn(1,ntr))/sqrt(2);

x = filter(channel,s) + v;
plot(x,'.'); plot(y(1001:2000),'.');
xlabel('Re\{x[n]\}'); xlabel('Re\{y[n]\}');
ylabel('Im\{x[n]\}'); ylabel('Im\{y[n]\}');
axis([-40 40 -40 40]); axis([-5 5 -5 5]);
axis('square'); axis('square');
title('Received signal x[n]'); title('Equalized signal y[n]');

Fig.1.4.1
Fig.1.6.1
The training signal:
Training error e[n]:
The training signal is a shifted version of the
original transmitted signal s[n]. This signal Plotting the squared magnitude of the error
would be known to both the transmitter and signal e[n], we see that convergence with the
receiver. RLS algorithm is fast. It occurs in about 60
samples with the equalizer settings chosen.
d = [zeros(1,10) s(1:ntr-10)];
semilogy(ntrain,abs(e).^2);
Trained equalization: xlabel('Number of iterations');
ylabel('|e[n]|^2')
To obtain convergence, we use the title('Squared magnitude of the training
conventional version of a recursive least- errors');
squares estimator. Only the first 2000
samples are used for training. The output
signal constellation shows clusters of values
centered on the sixteen different symbol
values--an indication that equalization has
been achieved.

P0 = 100*eye(20);
lam = 0.99;
h = adaptfilt.rls(20,lam,P0);
ntrain = 1:2000; Fig 1.7.1
[y,e] = filter(h,x(ntrain),d(ntrain));
2.Decision-directed adaptation:
Once the equalizer has converged, we can
use decision-directed adaptation to continue
adaptation during periods where no training
data are available. In such cases, the desired
signal d[n] is replaced by a quantized
version of the output signal y[n] that is
nearest to a valid symbol in the transmitted
signal. We can use the RLS adaptive
algorithm to implement this decision-
directed algorithm in a sample-by-sample
mode.
e = [e(1:2000) zeros(1,3000)];
h.ResetBeforeFiltering = 'off';
for n=2001:5000
yhat = h.Coefficients*[x(n);h.States];
ydd = round((yhat+1+j)/2)*2-1-j;
if (abs(real(ydd))>3)
ydd = 3*sign(real(ydd)) + imag(ydd);
end
if (abs(imag(ydd))>3)
ydd = real(ydd) + 3*sign(imag(ydd));
end
e(n) = d(n) - yhat;
[yhat,edd] = filter(h,x(n),ydd);
end
3. Comparison with trained adaptation:
If the symbol decisions are correct, then
decision- directed adaptation produces
identical performance to trained adaptation.
We can compare the error sequence from the
combined training/decision-directed
adaptive equalizer with one that uses
training data over the whole received signal.
A sudden jump in the difference in the error
signals indicates an incorrect symbol
decision was used in the decision- directed
algorithm. These errors are the effects of
these errors decay away, and the decision-
directed equalizer's performance remains
similar to that of the trained equalizer.
reset(h);
[ytrain,etrain] = filter(h,x,d);
n = 1:5000;
semilogy(n,abs(e),n,abs(etrain),n,abs(e-
etrain));
xlabel('number of iterations');
ylabel('|e[n]|^2');
title('Comparison of trained and
trained/decision-directed equalizers');
legend('Trained/Decision-
Directed','Trained','Difference');
Conclusion:
Channel equalization is a simple way of
mitigating the detrimental effects caused by
a frequency-selective and/or dispersive
communication link between sender and
receiver. The effects of fading can be
combated by using diversity to transmit the
signal over multiple channels that
experience independent fading and
coherently combining them at the receiver.
References :

www.google.com

www.wikipedia.com

www.answers.com