COMSATS Fall2016 (Rev.1.

0)

Principles of Communication Systems (PCS)

EEE 351

Propagation Models
&
Spread Spectrum Modulation
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Propagation Models

Propagation Models: focus on predicting the average received signal strength at a given distance
from the transmitter, as well as the variability of the signal strength in close spatial proximity to a
particular location.
Large-Scale or Path-Loss Models: predict the mean signal strength for an arbitrary transmitter-
receiver (T-R) separation distance; useful in predicting the coverage area of a transmitter;
characterize signal strength over large T-R distances (several hundreds or thousands of meters); as
mobile moves away from the transmitter over much larger distances, the local average received
signal will gradually decrease, and it is local average signal level that is predicted by large-scale
models.
Small-Scale or Fading Models: characterize the rapid fluctuations of the received signal strength
over very short distances (a few wavelengths) or short time durations (on the order of seconds); as
a mobile moves over very small distances, the instantaneous received signal strength, being the
sum of many contributions coming from different directions, may fluctuate rapidly giving rise to
small-scale fading.

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Propagation Models

Large-Scale and Small-Scale Fading

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Path Loss of Radio Signals

• Radio Propagation in Free Space

– Follow a straight line (besides gravitational effects)
– Straight line if exists between sender and receiver is called
Line of Sight (LOS)
– Free Space Loss (even in vacuum)
• Received Power Pr  1/d2
• Energy travels as spherical waves, in case of no
obstruction the spherical area s grows with the distance
over which the energy is distributed
– S= 4d2

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Path Loss of Radio Signals

– The Pr also depends upon the wavelength and the gains

of the receiver and transmitter antenna gains
• If there is a medium then signal experiences further
loss or attenuation due to air, rain, snow, fog, dust
particles, smog etc
• The medium effect is less for short distance (e.g.
Wireless LAN), but more pronounced for long
distance (e.g. Satellite)
– Radio signals (waves) can penetrate objects depending
upon the frequency
• Generally lower the frequency better the
penetration will be

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Free Space Loss

• Free space loss, ideal isotropic antenna

Pt

 4d  2 
 4fd  2
Pr 2 c2

Pt = signal power at transmitting antenna

Pr = signal power at receiving antenna
 = carrier wavelength
d = propagation distance between antennas
c = speed of light (» 3 ´ 10 8 m/s)
where d and  are in the same units (e.g., meters)
• Free space loss accounting for gain of other antennas
Pt

 4   d  2 2

 d  2 
 cd  2
Pr Gr Gt 2 Ar At f 2
Ar At

Gt = gain of transmitting antenna

Gr = gain of receiving antenna
At = effective area of transmitting antenna
Ar = effective area of receiving antenna

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Classical 2-ray ground bounce model

 The free space propagation model does not take into
account signal reflections. The signal transmitted by a
land-based antenna is received by another land-based
antenna in the presence of a strong ground reflection. The
following model is quite accurate for predicting received
signal strength over several km, using tall antennas.

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Classical 2-ray ground bounce model

 It can be shown that

ht2 hr2
Pr (d )  Pt Gt Gr 4
d

That means that with the two-ray model received power

4 2
decays with d , rather than d (as in free space).
Received power falls off at 40dB/decade of distance.

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Additional Effects
• Shadowing and Reflection are caused by objects much larger than the wavelength
of the signal
• Signal shows particle effect
• Scattering and Diffraction are caused by objects with size in the order of
wavelength or less
– Signal shows wave effect due to scattering and diffraction
– The wavelength of GSM and AMPS signals are in the order of 10cm
• Many objects can cause these effects
• Scattering
– Incoming signal is scattered into several weaker outgoing signals
• Diffraction
– Radio waves are deflected at an edge and propagate in different directions
• Result of scattering and diffraction are patterns of varying signal strength

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Multipath propagation
 Signal can take many different paths between sender and
receiver due to reflection, scattering, diffraction

multipath
LOS pulses pulses

signal at sender
 Time dispersion: signal is dispersed over time signal at receiver

 interference with “neighbor” symbols, Inter Symbol

Interference (ISI)
 The signal reaches a receiver directly and phase shifted
 distorted signal depending on the phases of the different
parts

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Multipath Propagation
• Together with direct transmission from sender and receiver, and the
propagation effects cause multipath propagation
• Signals emitted by the sender travel through different paths
– Direct path: LOS
– Reflection: reflected signal
– Scattering: scattered signals
• Signals through different paths reach the receiver at different times
– Path lengths are different while the signal speed=speed of light is constant
– Delay spread
• Delay spread
– Typical of radio transmission characteristics
– It is independent of user mobility
– It is caused by multipath propagation
– Delay spread of 3s is common in cities
– GSM can tolerate delay spread upto 16s ~ 3km path difference

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Multipath Propagation - Effects

• Effects of Delay Spread

– Short impulse is smeared into broader impulse or into several weaker impulses
– Each path causes different attenuation resulting into received signal with
different power level
– Some received impulses are too weak to be detected
• Appeared as noise
• Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI)
– Impulses generated at the sender may overlap at the receiver
– An impulse represents a symbol
• One of more symbols form a bit
– Overlapping impulses shows that the energy intended for one symbol spills over
to the adjacent symbol
• Intersymbol interference (ISI)
– The higher the symbol rate the worst ISI effect would be
• Because original symbols are closer to each other
– It limits the bandwidth of the radio channel
• How fast the signal can be transmitted
– The overlapping symbols lead to misinterpretation at the receiver causing
transmission errors

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Effects of mobility
 Channel characteristics change over time and location
 signal paths change
 different delay variations of different signal parts
 different phases of signal parts

 quick changes in the power received (short term fading)

power long term

fading
 Additional changes in
 distance to sender
 obstacles
t
short term fading
 slow changes in the average power received (long term
fading)

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Fading
• Short term or small-scale fading
– The power of received signal changes considerably over short time
– Depending upon multiple path signals take, they may be in
different phases cancelling each other
• Cause transmission error
– Long term or large-scale fading
– The average power of received signal varies over time
– Sender can increase/decrease the sending power to keep the
power of received signal within a limit

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Small-Scale Fading
• Rapid fluctuations of the amplitudes,
phases or multipath delays of a radio
signal; these fluctuations are observed
over short periods of time or over short
distances and referred to as fading
• Fading is caused by interference
between versions of the signal arriving
via different paths; these waves, known
as multipath waves, combine at the
receiver to produce a resultant signal
that can vary widely in amplitude and
phase

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Factors influencing small-scale fading

• Multipath Propagation
– constantly changing environment, multiple versions of the transmitted
signal arrive at receiver, displaced in time and spatial orientation
• Speed of the mobile
– relative motion between the base station and the mobile, random
frequency modulation due different Doppler shifts of multipath
components, positive or negative
• Speed of surrounding objects
– mobile objects in the radio environment induce a varying Doppler
shift on multipath components; this effect dominates fading if the
surrounding objects move faster than the mobile, otherwise this can
be ignored.
– Coherence Time: defines the staticness of the channel, directly
affected by Doppler shift

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Factors influencing small-scale fading

• Transmission bandwidth of the signal
– if signal bandwidth > channel bandwidth, the signal is distorted in
time but des not fade much (small-scale fading is not significant);
Otherwise, the signal amplitude varies rapidly but does not distort in
time
– Coherence bandwidth: measure of the maximum frequency
difference for which the signals are strongly correlated; quantifies the
bandwidth of the channel, in terms of specific multipath structure of
the channel

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Types of small-scale fading

 Type of fading experienced by a signal propagating through a
mobile radio channel depends on the nature of transmitted signal
with respect to the characteristics of the channel
 Different transmitted signals undergo different type of fading
depending on the relationship between
 Signal parameters (bandwidth, symbol rate, etc)
 Channel parameters (delay spread and Doppler spread)
 Time dispersion and frequency dispersion mechanisms lead to four
distinct effects:
Delay Spread  time dispersion and frequency selective fading
Doppler Spread  frequency dispersion and time selective fading
 Two propagation mechanisms are independent of each other

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Types of small-scale fading

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Types Of Propagation Models And Their Uses
• Simple Analytical models
– Used for understanding and
predicting individual paths and
specific obstruction cases
• General Area models
– Primary drivers: statistical
– Used for early system
dimensioning (cell counts, etc.)
• Point-to-Point models
– Primary drivers: analytical
– Used for detailed coverage
analysis and cell planning
• Local Variability models
– Primary drivers: statistical
– Characterizes microscopic level
fluctuations in a given locale,
confidence-of-service probability
Examples of various model types
 Simple Analytical
• Free space (Friis formula)
• Reflection cancellation
• Knife-edge diffraction
 Area
• Okumura-Hata
• Euro/Cost-231
• Walfisch-Betroni/Ikegami
 Point-to-Point
• Ray Tracing
- Lee’s Method, others
• Tech-Note 101
• Longley-Rice, Biby-C
 Local Variability
• Rayleigh Distribution
• Normal Distribution
• Joint Probability Techniques
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General Principles Of Area Models

• Area models imitate an average path in a defined area
• They’re based on measured data alone, with no consideration of
individual path features or physical mechanisms
• Typical inputs used by model:
– Frequency
– Distance from transmitter to receiver
– Actual or effective base station & mobile heights
– Average terrain elevation
– Morphology correction loss (Urban, Suburban, Rural, etc.)
• Results may be quite different than observed on individual paths in
the area

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The Okumura Model: General Concept

The Okumura model is based on detailed analysis of exhaustive drive-test

measurements made in Tokyo and its suburbs during the late 1960’s and
early 1970’s. The collected date included measurements on numerous
VHF, UHF, and microwave signal sources, both horizontally and vertically
polarized, at a wide range of heights.
The measurements were statistically processed and analyzed with respect to
almost every imaginable variable and correlation factor Garea (f,area), for
BS antenna height ht = 200 m and MS antenna height hr = 3 m.
Okumura has served as the basis for high-level design of many existing
wireless systems, and has spawn a number of newer models adapted
from its basic concepts and numerical parameters.

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Link Performance Improvement

 Three main techniques that can be used independently or in

tandem to improve link performance
 Equalization: a filtering technique that compensates for
the presence of ISI. In practice, equalizers usually need
to be adaptive since channels are generally unknown and
time varying.
 Diversity: a signal processing technique that reduces the
depth and duration of fades. There are several types of
diversities: spatial, frequency, temporal.
 Channel coding: the process of adding redundant bits for
detecting or correcting errors

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Equalization

 Intersymbol interference (ISI) is a major obstacle to high

speed data transmission over wireless channels
 Equalization is a technique used to combat intersymbol
interference
 Mobile fading channel is random and time-varying, adaptive
equalizers are needed to track the time-varying
characteristics of the channel
 An equalizer is an inverse filter of the channel
 For frequency selective channels, the equalizer enhances the
frequency components with small amplitudes and attenuates
the strong frequencies in the received frequency spectrum
in order to provide a flat, composite, received frequency
response and linear phase response

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Equalization

 Due to the presence of noise, an equalizer is unable to

achieve perfect performance, there is always some residual
ISI and some tracking error
 The instantaneous combined frequency response will not
always be flat, resulting in some finite prediction error
 General operating modes of an adapter equalizer include
training and tracking
 A known, fixed-length training sequence is sent to adapt the
equalizer to proper setting for minimum BER detection
 As user data is received, the adaptive algorithm of the
equalizer tracks the changing channel

Mobile Broadband Networks – Wireless Communication

Basics
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Diversity
 Diversity is the utilization of independent paths between the
transmitter and the receiver in order to reduce the chance
of a deep fade
 Diversity exploits the random nature of radio propagation by
finding independent or at least highly uncorrelated signal
paths for communication
 If one path is undergoes a deep fade, another independent
path may have a strong signal
 A powerful, cost effective way to mitigate fading effects
 Diversity can be accomplished either at the transmitter or
at the receiver
 Independent paths for diversity can be implemented in
space, time, or frequency

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Diversity

 Microscopic diversity techniques exploit the rapidly varying

signal
 In case of small-scale fading, if two antennas are separated
by a fraction of a meter, one may receive a null while other
receives a strong signal
 A receiver can mitigate small-scale fading effects by
selecting the best signal
 Macroscopic diversity techniques enable a mobile station or a
base station to improve substantially the average SNR
 A mobile can select a base station which provides the best
signal at a given time on the forward link
 Base station is also able to improve the reverse link by using
multiple antennas that sufficiently separated in space

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Channel Coding

 Channel Coding: process of introducing redundancy in the

transmitted data to protect it from errors
 Channel coders operate on a source data by encoding source
information into a code sequence for transmission through
the channel
 Error Detection Codes: channel codes used for error
detection only
 Error Correction Codes: codes that detect and also correct
errors
 Wireless link performance can be improved through channel
coding

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Channel Coding

 Introduction of redundancy increases raw data rate

over the link, thus increasing bandwidth requirements
 Thus, channel coding reduces the bandwidth efficiency
of the link but provides better BER performance
 Three basic types of channel codes:
 Block Codes
 Convolutional Codes
 Turbo Codes

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Spread Spectrum
Modulation
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Spread Spectrum (SS) Modulation

 Bandwidth is a limited resource, so primary design objective is to
minimize the required transmission bandwidth
 The minimum required bandwidth for transmission of a signal is a
function of the symbol rate. From Nyquist pulse considerations (no
ISI condition):
 Baseband minimum bandwidth Bmin = Rs/2, where Rs is the symbol
rate.
 For passband transmission Bmin = Rs
 In practical systems, pulses are shaped such that actual bandwidth
B is equal to or slightly larger than Bmin
 Spread Spectrum (SS) employs transmission bandwidth that is
several orders of magnitude greater than the minimum required
bandwidth

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Spread Spectrum (SS) Modulation

 Spread spectrum signals are pseudorandom with noise-like
properties
 Spreading waveform is controlled by a pseudo-noise (PN)
sequence or pseudo-noise code
 A PN code is binary sequence that appears random but can be
generated in a deterministic manner by intended receivers
 SS signals are demodulated at the receiver through cross-
correlation with a locally generated version of PN sequence
 Cross-correlation with the correct PN sequence despreads the
SS signal and restores the message as original data
 Cross-correlating the signal with an undesired user results in a
very small amount of wideband noise at the receiver

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Spread Spectrum Modulation

 SS systems are not only resistance to multipath fading, but
can also exploit the delayed multipath components to
improve performance of the system using a RAKE receiver
 A RAKE receiver is capable of combining information from
several multipath components to form a stronger version of
the signal
 Frequency planning in not needed for SS systems, all users
share the same spectrum and all cells can use the same
channels
 Spread Spectrum Modulations
 Direct Sequence (DS) Spread Spectrum
 Frequency Hopping (FH) Spread Spectrum

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DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum)

 In DSSS systems, each user is assigned a unique PN code which
is approximately orthogonal to the codes of other users
 The receiver can thus separate each user based on their codes,
although they occupy the same spectrum all the time
 Spread spectrum bandwidth usage is inefficient for single user,
but efficient for multiple users
 SS systems are very bandwidth efficient in multiple-user,
multiple access interference (MAI) environments
 General properties of direct sequence spread spectrum signals:
 large bandwidth
 pseudo-noise appearance
 interference rejection capability
 overlay of users in the same bandwidth
 resistance to multipath fading

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DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum)

• XOR of the signal with pseudo-random number (chipping

sequence)
– many chips per bit (e.g., 128) result in higher bandwidth of the
t
signal b

• Advantages user data

0 1 XOR
– reduces frequency selective
tc
fading chipping
– in cellular networks sequence
01101010110101 =
• base stations can use the
same frequency range resulting
• several base stations can signal

detect and recover the signal 01101011001010

• soft handover tb: bit period

tc: chip period
• Disadvantages
– precise power control necessary

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DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum)

spread
spectrum transmit
user data signal signal
X modulator

chipping radio
sequence carrier

transmitter
correlator
lowpass sampled
received filtered products sums
signal signal data
demodulator X integrator decision

radio chipping
carrier sequence

receiver

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CDMA – Multiple Users

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Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FH-SS)

 Signal is broadcast over apparently random series of radio

frequencies
 A number of channels allocated for the FH signal
 Width of each channel corresponds to bandwidth of input signal

 Signal hops from frequency to frequency at fixed intervals

 Transmitter operates in one channel at a time
 Bits are transmitted using some encoding scheme
 At each successive interval, a new carrier frequency is selected

 Channel sequence dictated by spreading code

 Receiver, hopping between frequencies in synchronization with
transmitter, picks up message
 Advantages
 Attempts to jam signal on one frequency succeed only at knocking out
a few bits

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Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FH-SS)

 Frequency Hopping signal – sequence of modulated data bursts

with time-varying, pseudorandom carrier frequencies
 Hopset: set of possible carrier frequencies
 Hopping occurs over a frequency band that includes a number of
channels
 Instantaneous Bandwidth, B: bandwidth of a channel used in the
hopset
 Total Hopping Bandwidth, Bss: bandwidth of the spectrum over
which the hopping occurs
 Hop Duration or Hopping Period, Th: time duration between hops,
also known as Dwell Time
 Processing Gain for FH systems is
PG = Bss/B

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FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum)

• Discrete changes of carrier frequency
– sequence of frequency changes determined via pseudo random
number sequence
• Two versions
– Fast Hopping: several frequencies per user bit
– Slow Hopping: several user bits per frequency
• Advantages
– frequency selective fading and interference limited to short period
– simple implementation
– uses only small portion of spectrum at any time
• Disadvantages
– not as robust as DSSS
– simpler to detect

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FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum)

tb

user data
0 1 0 1 1 t
f
td
f3 slow
f2 hopping
f1 (3 bits/hop)

td t
f

f3 fast
f2 hopping
f1 (3 hops/bit)

tb: bit period td: dwell time

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FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum)

narrowband spread
signal transmit
user data signal
modulator modulator

transmitter frequency hopping

synthesizer sequenc
e

narrowband
received signal
signal data
receiver demodulator demodulator

hopping frequency
sequenc synthesizer
e

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