MOBILE RADIO PROPAGATION

MOBILE RADIO CHANNEL

The mobile radio channel places fundamental limitations on the performance of wireless communication systems. The transmission path between the Tx and the Rx can vary from simple line-of-sight to one that is severely obstructed by buildings, mountains, and foliage. Wired channels are stationary and predictable, while radio channels are extremely random and difficult to analyze.

Modeling the radio channel has historically been one of the most difficult parts of mobile radio system design, and is typically done in a statistical fashion, based on measurements made specifically for an intended communication system or spectrum allocation.

Direct wave, LOS and Obstructive Path

Direct wave path is a path clear from terrain contour. The line-of-sight path is path clear from buildings. Line-of-sight transmission means the transmitting and receiving antennae can "see" each other as shown. When the terrain contour blocks the direct wave path, it is called as the obstructive path.

Two antennae are shown each having the same height. The maximum distance at which they can see each other, dLOS, occurs when the sighting line just grazes the earth's surface.

The mechanisms behind electromagnetic wave propagation are diverse, but can generally be attributed to reflection, diffraction, and scattering. Most cellular systems operate in urban areas where there is no direct LOS path between the Tx and the Rx, and where the presence of high-rise buildings causes severe diffraction loss.

Propagation models have focused on predicting

the average received signal strength at a given distance from the Tx useful in estimating the radio coverage of a Tx large scale propagation models The variability of the signal strength in close spatial proximity to a particular location models that characterize the rapid fluctuations of the received signal strength over very short travel distances or short time durations small scale or fading models.

As a mobile moves over very small distances, the instantaneous received signal strength may fluctuate rapidly giving rise to small-scale fading. Here the received signal power may vary by as much as 30 or 40 dB when the Rx is moved by only a fraction of a wavelength. As the mobile moves away from the Tx over much larger distances, the local average received signal will gradually decrease, and this is predicted by large-scale propagation models.

Small-scale and large-scale fading

Fading
Fading, also known as small-scale fading, is the result of interference between two or more attenuated versions of the transmitted signal arriving at the receiver in such a way that these signals are added destructively. These multiple versions of the transmitted signal result from the multiple paths present in the channel or from the rapid dynamic changes of the channel. In this case, the speed of the mobile and the transmission bandwidth of the signal also play a vital role.

Doppler Shift
The apparent change in frequency of the transmitted signal due to the relative motion of the mobile is known as the Doppler shift, which is given by fds =vcos/ where v is the velocity of the mobile, is the signal wavelength, and is the spatial angle between the direction of motion of the mobile and the direction of arrival of the wave.

Excess Delay and Power Delay Profile, c( )

Excess delay is the relative delay of the ith multipath signal component, compared to the first arriving component and is given by i Power delay profile is the average output signal power of the channel as a function of excess time delay .

In practice, c() is measured by transmitting very narrow pulses, or equivalently a wide band signal, and crosscorrelating the received signal with a delayed version of itself. Power delay profile is also known as multipath intensity profile and delay power spectrum. It gets the latter name because of its frequency domain component, which gives the power spectrum density

Delay Spread (Tm) and Coherence Bandwidth (BWcoh)

Delay spread, also known as multipath spread, of the channel is the range of values of excess time delay ,over which c( ) is essentially nonzero. The frequency band in which all the spectral components of the transmitted signal pass through a channel with equal gain and linear phase is known as coherence bandwidth of that channel.

Over this bandwidth the channel remains invariant. BWcoh can be expressed in terms of rms delay spread, though there is no exact relationship between these two parameters.

Doppler Spread (Bd)

Spreading of the frequency spectrum of the transmitted signal resulting from the rate of change of the mobile radio channel is known as Doppler spread. With the transmitted signal frequency fc , the resultant Doppler spectrum has the components in the range between ( fcfd,max) and ( fc+fd,max), fd,max being the maximum Doppler frequency shift.

Coherence Time (Tcoh)

The time period during which the channel impulse response remains invariant is known as coherence time of the channel. Tcoh is inversely proportional to the Doppler spread

Types of Small-Scale Fading

Small-scale fading is divided into two broad classes, which are based on the time delay spread and Doppler spread. The time delay spread-dependent class is divided into two categories, flat fading and frequency selective fading, while the Doppler spread-dependent class is categorized as fast and slow fading.

Flat Fading
The received signal in a mobile radio environment experiences flat fading if the channel has a constant gain and linear phase response over a bandwidth that is greater than the bandwidth of the transmitted signal. Symbol period of the transmitted signal is greater than the delay spread of the channel. As a rule of thumb it should be at least 10 times greater.

Bandwidth of the channel is greater than the bandwidth of the transmitted signal. Since the bandwidth of the transmitted signal is narrower than the channel bandwidth, the flat fading channels are also known as narrowband channels. Typical flat fading channels result in deep fades, and this requires 20 to 30 dB more transmitter power to achieve low bit error rates (BERs) during times of deep fades, compared to systems operating over nonfading channels.

Flat Fading Channel Characteristics

Frequency-Selective Fading
The received signal in a mobile radio environment experiences frequencyselective fading if the channel has a constant gain and linear phase response over a bandwidth that is smaller than the bandwidth of the transmitted signal. Symbol period of the transmitted signal is smaller than the delay spread of the channel. As a rule of thumb it should be at least 10 times smaller.

Bandwidth of the channel is smaller than the bandwidth of the transmitted signal. Since the bandwidth of the transmitted signal is wider than the channel bandwidth, the frequency-selective fading channels are also known as wideband channels.

Frequency-selective channel results in intersymbol interference (ISI) for the received signal. This type of fading channels is difficult to model compared to the flat fading channels since each multipath signal needs to be modeled individually and the channel has to be considered as a linear filter.

Frequency selective Fading Channel Characteristics

Fast Fading
The received signal, in a mobile radio environment, experiences fast fading as a result of rapidly changing channel impulse response within the symbol duration. Coherence time of the channel is smaller than the symbol period of the transmitted signal. Thus this is also called timeselective fading.

Doppler spread is greater than the transmitted signal bandwidth. Channel varies faster than the baseband signal variations. In fast-flat fading channels the amplitude of the received signal varies faster than the rate of change of the transmitted baseband signal. In fast-frequency-selective channels the amplitudes, phases, and time delays of the multipath components vary faster than the rate of change of the transmitted signal.

Slow Fading
The received signal, in a mobile radio environment, experiences slow fading as a result of slowly varying channel impulse response within the symbol duration. Coherence time of the channel is greater than the symbol period of the transmitted signal. In this case, the channel can be assumed to be static over one or several symbol durations.

Doppler spread is smaller than the transmitted signal bandwidth. Channel varies slower than the baseband signal variations.

Rayleigh Fading
When the channel impulse response c(, t) at a delay and time instant t is modeled as a zero-mean complex-valued Gaussian process, the envelope |c(, t)| at that time instant t is known to be Rayleigh distributed. In this case the channel is said to be a Rayleigh fading channel.

A reasonable model for tropospheric and ionospheric signal propagation as well as the effect of heavily built-up urban environments on radio signals. Rayleigh fading is most applicable when there is no dominant propagation along the line of sight between the transmitter and receiver.

One second of Rayleigh fading with a maximum Doppler shift of 10Hz.

One second of Rayleigh fading with a maximum Doppler shift of 100Hz.

Rician Fading
When there are fixed scatterers or signal reflectors present in the mobile channel, in addition to the randomly moving scatterers, the channel impulse response c (, t) can no longer be modeled as a zero-mean complex valued Gaussian process. In this case the envelope has a Ricean distribution and the corresponding channel is known as a Ricean fading channel.

where A denotes the peak amplitude of the dominant received signal arriving at the receiver either from a fixed scatterer or through a line of sight path and I0(.) represents the zero-order modified Bessel function of the first kind.

Rician fading occurs when one of the paths, typically a line of sight signal, is much stronger than the others.