Lecture -2

Radio Fundamentals

Dr. Murtada.M.A 1
Radio Communication
• Spectrum
• Transmitter
• Signal propagation
• Modulation

Dr. Murtada.M.A 2
RADIO SPECTRUM

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twisted coax cable optical transmission
pair

1 Mm 10 km 100 m 1m 10 mm 100 m 1 m
300 Hz 30 kHz 3 MHz 300 MHz 30 GHz 3 THz 300 THz

VLF LF MF HF VHF UHF SHF EHF infrared visible light UV

• VLF = Very Low Frequency
• LF = Low Frequency
• MF = Medium Frequency
• HF = High Frequency
• VHF = Very High Frequency
• UHF = Ultra High Frequency
• SHF = Super High Frequency
• EHF = Extra High Frequency
• UV = Ultraviolet Light

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 Signal propagation property
• Radio signal behaves like light in free space
(straight line)
• Receiving power proportional to 1/d²
(d = distance between sender and receiver)
• So ideally, the transmitter and a receiver
must see each other!

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 Maximum Radio Distance

• d = 3.57 [(kh1)^1/2 + (kh2)^1/2]

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 Three means of propagation
• Ground wave
• Tropospheric wave
• Ionospheric or sky wave

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 Ground Wave
• travels in contact with earth’s surface
• reflection, refraction and scattering by objects on
the ground
• transmitter and receiver need NOT see each other
• affects all frequencies
• at VLF or higher, provides more reliable
propagation means
• signal dies off rapidly as distance increases
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 Tropospheric Wave
• bending(refraction) of wave in the lower
atmosphere
• VHF communication possible over a long
distance
• bending increases with frequency – so higher
frequency more chance of propagation
• More of an annoyance for VHF or UHF
(cellular)

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 Ionospheric or Sky Wave
• Reflected back to earth by ionospheric layer
of the earth atmosphere
• By repeated reflection, communication can
be established over 1000s of miles
• Mainly at frequencies below 30MHz
• More effective at times of high sunspot
activity
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 4 possible events
Radio wave Radio wave

shadowing scattering

Radio wave

reflection diffraction

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 Multipath Characteristics
• A signal may arrive at a receiver
- many different times
- many different directions
- due to vector addition
. Reinforce
. Cancel
- signal strength differs from place to place

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LECTURE-3

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 Mobile System
• Usually Base Station is not mobile
• Receiver could be moving (65mph!)
• Whenever relative motion exists
- Doppler shift
- Fading
• Even the motion of scatterers cause fading

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 Free Space Propagation
• Suppose we have unobstructed line-of-sight

Pr(d) = (Pt Gt Gr ^2)/(4)^2 d^2 L)

-Pt transmitted power
-Gt, Gr Antenna gain
-wavelength in meters
- d distance in meters
- L (>= 1) system loss factor (not related to
propagation.
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 Propagation Losses
• Two major components
- Long term fading m(t)
- Short term fading r(t)

Received signal s(t)

s(t) = m(t) r(t)

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 dB - decibel
• Decibel, a logarithmic unit of intensity used to
indicated power lost or gained between two
signals.  Named after Alexander Graham Bell.

10 log (P1/P2)

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 Radio Signal Fading
Short term fading
Signal strength (dB)

Long term fading

T

Time

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 Short term fading
• Also known as fast fading – caused by local multi
paths.
• Observed over distance = ½ wave length
• 30mph will experience several fast fades in a sec.
• Given by Rayleigh Distribution
• This is nothing but the square root of sum of the square
of two Gaussian functions.
r = square root ( Ac * Ac + As * As)
Ac and As are two amplitude components of the field
intensity of the signal
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 Long term fading
• Long term variation in mean signal level is
also known as slow fading
• Caused by movement over large distances.
• The probability density function is given by
a log-normal distribution
- normal distribution on a log scale

P(m) = (1/m (m) 2) e^[-(log m – E(m))^2/(2 (m)^2)]

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 Delay Spread
• Signal follows different paths to reach same
destination.
• So same signal may arrive many times at
different time intervals.


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 Delay Spread
• In digital system, delay spread causes
intersymbol interference.
• Therefore, there is a limit on the maximum
symbol rate of a digital multipath channel.
• Obviously, delay spreads are different in
different environment.
• (roughly between 0.2 to 3 microseconds)

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 Capacity of Channel
• What is the maximum transmission rate so
that the channel has very high reliability?
- error free capacity of a channel
• C.E. Shannon’s work suggest that signaling
scheme exists for error-free transmission if
the rate of transmission is lower than the
channel capacity.

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 Noiseless Channel
• The Nyquist bit rate formula defines the
theoretical maximum bit rate.

• Bandwidth is the bandwidth of the channel,

L is the number of signal levels used to
represent data

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 Noisy Channel:Shannon
Capacity
• C - channel capacity (bits/s)
• B – transmission bandwidth (Hz)
• Capacity is the capacity of the channel in bits per
second

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 Freq. for mobile communication
• VHF-/UHF-ranges for mobile radio
– simple, small antenna
• SHF and higher for directed radio links,
satellite communication
– small antenna, focusing
– large bandwidth available
• Wireless LANs use frequencies in UHF to
SHF spectrum
– limitations due to absorption by water and oxygen
• weather dependent fading, signal loss due to by 2.2.1
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heavy 26
rainfall etc.
 Modulation
• Digital modulation
– digital data is translated into an analog signal
– ASK, FSK, PSK (… Shift Keying)
– differences in spectral efficiency, power efficiency,
robustness
• Analog modulation
– shifts center frequency of baseband signal up to the
radio carrier
• Motivation
– smaller antennas (e.g., /4)
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 Types of Modulation
• Amplitude modulation
• Frequency modulation
• Phase modulation
• Combination modulation

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 analog
baseband
digital
signal
data digital analog
101101001 modulation modulation radio transmitter

radio
carrier

analog
baseband
digital
signal
analog synchronization data
demodulation decision 101101001 radio receiver

radio
carrier

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Amplitude Modulation

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Frequency Modulation

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Phase Modulation

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 Digital modulation
1 0 1
• Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK):
– simple
– low bandwidth t
– susceptible to interference
1 0 1
• Frequency Shift Keying (FSK):
– somewhat larger bandwidth
t

• Phase Shift Keying (PSK): 1 0 1

– more complex (both ends)
– robust against interference
t

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