Link reliability for IS-54/136 handsets with different receiverstructures

We estimate link reliabilities for IS-54/136 digital cellular handsets operating with or without an equalizer in urban, suburban, rural, and mountainous environments. We define the reliability of a user's receiver as the probability that the bit error rate (BER) is less than some specified value. The probability is taken over all mobile positions in a cell area and the BER is averaged over multipath fading. Using a range of tools for modeling and simulation of the digital cellular link (transmitter, channel, and receiver), we present an extensive set of results showing the influence of: (1) receiver structures (differential detection with no equalizer, differential detection with selection diversity, or coherent detection with a medium-complexity equalizer); (2) joint distribution of the channel's RMS delay spread and average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) (this distribution is based on an environment-specific model reported previously); and (3) vehicle speed (0-200 km/h). In all simulations, we assumed a two-path Rayleigh fading channel characterized by: (1) the delay between paths and (2) the ratio of power received from the first path to that from the second path (the RMS delay spread relates to these two parameters). For typical cell sizes, we find that imposing an equalization requirement in IS-54/136 handsets is overly stringent in all environments, except mountainous areas. For these environments, achieving high reliability requires either equalization or other measures, such as smaller cells, directional base-station antennas, or dual-diversity handsets     

Bit error simulation for π/4 DQPSK mobile radio communicationsusing two-ray and measurement-based impulse response models

An accurate software/hardware bit-by-bit error simulator for mobile radio communications is described. Simulation results in indoor and outdoor channels are compared with theoretical results. Bit error rate (BER) results in simulated frequency-selective fading channels generated by several channel models such as two-ray, constant amplitude, and simulated indoor radio channel impulse models (SIRCIMs) are presented. It is shown that BER is not only dependent on the RMS delay spread, but also on the distribution of temporal and spatial multipath components in local areas. An important result is that a two-ray Rayleigh fading model is a poor fit for indoor wireless channels and, if used, can underestimate the BER by orders of magnitude. A real-time bit error simulation of video transmission using the bit-by-bit error simulator is described. The simulator, called BERSIM, is shown to be a useful tool for evaluating emerging data transmission products for digital mobile communications     

Millimeter-Wave Propagation Channel Characterization for Short-Range Wireless Communications

This paper presents and analyzes the results of millimeter-wave 60-GHz frequency range propagation channel measurements that are performed in various indoor environments for continuous-route and direction-of-arrival (DOA) measurement campaigns. The statistical parameters of the propagation channel, such as the number of paths, the RMS delay spread, the path loss, and the shadowing, are inspected. Moreover, the interdependencies of different characteristics of the multipath channel are also investigated. A linear relationship between the number of paths and the delay spread is found, negative cross correlation between the shadow fading and the delay spread can be established, and an upper bound exponential model of the delay spread and the path loss is developed to estimate the worst case of the RMS delay spread at given path loss. Based on the DOA measurements that are carried out in a room [line of sight (LOS)] and in a corridor with both LOS and nonline-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios, radio-wave propagation mechanisms are studied. It is found that considering the direct wave and the first-order reflected waves from smooth surfaces is sufficient in the LOS cases. Transmission loss is very high; however, diffraction is found to be a significant propagation mechanism in NLOS propagation environments. The results can be used for the design of 60-GHz radio systems in short-range wireless applications.     

A microcellular ray-tracing propagation model and evaluation of itsnarrow-band and wide-band predictions

Due to the site specific nature of microcellular operational environments, propagation models are required to take into account the exact position, orientation and electrical properties of individual buildings, and hence, ray-tracing techniques have emerged as the dominant methods to predict propagation in such environments. A novel hybrid three-dimensional (3-D) ray-tracing algorithm which can evaluate scenarios incorporating many thousands of objects by utilising the concept of “illumination zones,” is presented. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the presented model, comparisons of narrow-band and wide-band predictions with measurements are performed for a variety of scenarios. First, power comparisons show that very accurate predictions can be achieved (RMS errors less than 3.7 dB). Then, wide-band analysis shows that since the RMS delay spread for systems with finite bandwidth is a function of the multipath phase, only average measured and predicted RMS delay spread values can be compared and as a result, limited averaging can produce large RMS errors. With sufficient averaging the achieved wide-band accuracy in terms of the predicted RMS delay spread, is adequate for most planning purposes     

Availability Prediction of 8 PSK Digital Microwave Systems During Multipath Propagation

Analysis is presented to evaluate the worst case availability of 90 Mbit/s, 8 PSK digital microwave systems during multipath propagation. The model used in the analysis is based on the assumption that during multipath fading, the microwave energy propagates from the transmitter to the receiver via two paths, thus generating a single echo. Based on this model, three main results are found; that is 1) echo delay decreases exponentially with fade depth, 2) the worst case fade distribution follows a Rayleigh distribution, 3) the unavailability of a typical 6 GHz path during multipath propagation is unacceptably high without the use of an adaptive amplitude slope equalizer.     

Performance of Multiple-Access DCSK Communication over a Multipath Fading Channel with Delay Spread

The bit error rate (BER) performances of variant delay multiple-access differential chaos-shift keying (VDMA-DCSK) communication systems over a multipath fading channel with delay spread are investigated. The BER formula of the VDMA-DCSK over the fading channel is evaluated. A two-ray Rayleigh fading channel model is used to simulate the VDMA-DCSK system. The theoretical and simulation results are presented and they match each other, which supports the theoretical analysis. The multipath performance of the VDMA-DCSK is compared with that of a benchmark coherent MA-CSK system and with that of an invariant delay MA-DCSK system. The results show that in the multipath fading channel with delay spread environment the VDMA-DCSK system performance decreases least.     

Indoor radiated-mode leaky feeder propagation at 2.0 GHz

This paper presents the results of narrow-band and wide-band propagation measurements carried out at 2.0 GHz in an indoor environment using a radiated-mode leaky feeder as the transmitting antenna. The narrow-band measurements were devised to measure attenuation of radio signals and the wide-band techniques to measure multipath impulse responses and their associated root mean square (RMS) delay spread. Analysis of the narrow-band data files shows that the received signal levels in the direction along the feeder generally decay exponentially due to the feeder-specific attenuation. The received signal levels in the direction radial to the feeder decrease slowly, and the distance-power law exponent is found to be smaller than one. The slow and fast variations of the received signal levels are also examined. The results reveal that the slow variations basically follow the log-normal distribution, while the fast variations fit the Rayleigh distribution in the direction parallel to the feeder and the Rician distribution in the direction radial to the feeder, respectively. Analysis of the wide-band data files reveals that the maximum value of the RMS delay spread is 60.6 ns and the RMS delay spread values are less than 42 ns 50% of the time. One therefore can conclude that the indoor channel excited by the radiated-mode leaky feeder has a broad coherent band-width and can support a data rate of up to 3.3 Mb/s without equalization     

Performance of binary FSK communications over frequency-selectiveRayleigh fading channels

The performance of binary frequency-shift-keyed communications over frequency-selective wide-sense-stationary uncorrelated-scattering Rayleigh fading channels is discussed. Previous analyses of FSK communications over frequency-selective channels have considered the average probability of error for specific models for the fading channel and typically assume that the two FSK signals are orthogonal. A technique for obtaining bounds on the average error probability for FSK in terms of one or two parameters obtainable from multipath spread or frequency correlation functions channel measurements is described     

Error probabilities for Rician fading multichannel reception of binary andn-ary signals

Performance characteristics are derived for two different forms of multireceivers (the coherent and noncoherent) which are used with binary andN-ary signaling through the Rician fading multichannel. The coherent multireceiver is capable of perfectly measuring the channel amplitudes and phases whereas, at the other extreme, the noncoherent multireceiver implies a receiver which requires no channel measurement whatsoever. The multichannel model presumes that each transmission mode supports a specular or fixed component and a random or scatter component which fades according to the Rayleigh distribution. Heretofore, performance analyses of multichannel links have assumed that the fading obeys the Rayleigh law. This multichannel model is sufficiently general to include four practical types: the Rician and the Rayleigh fading multichannels, multichannels whose propagation modes do not fade, and those which simultaneously contain Rician and Rayleigh fading propagation paths or the so called mixed-mode multichannel. Error probabilities are graphically illustrated and compared for various multichannel models. It is found that the effectiveness of multichannel reception is highly dependent on the strength of the specular channel component relative to the mean squared value of the random channel component. In particular, multichannel reception is more effective when applied to the completely random multichannel. For special cases the error-rate expressions reduce to well-known results.     

Impulse response modeling of indoor radio propagation channels

If indoor radio propagation channels are modeled as linear filters, they can be characterized by reporting the parameters of their equivalent impulse response functions. The measurement and modeling of estimates for such functions in two different office buildings are reported. The resulting data base consists of 12000 impulse response estimates of the channel that were obtained by inverse Fourier transforming of the channel's transfer functions. It is shown that the number of multipath components in each impulse response estimate is a normally-distributed random variable with a mean value that increases with increasing antenna separations; a modified Poisson distribution shows a good fit to the arrival time of the multipath components; amplitudes are lognormally distributed over both local and global areas, with a log-mean value that decreases almost linearly with increasing excess delay; for small displacements of the receiving antenna, the amplitude of the multipath components are correlated; the amplitudes of adjacent multipath components of the same impulse response function show negligible correlations; and the RMS delay spread over large areas is normally distributed with mean values that increase with increasing antenna separation     

An analytical statistical model for the RMS delay spread parameter in millimeter frequencies

A new statistical model for rms delay spread is presented. The model has been developed under the assumption of the existence of two paths (two-path model). It is assumed that the amplitude of each path follows the so-called log-Student distribution with one degree of freedom, while the differential propagation delay of the two paths follows the uniform distribution. The parameters involved with the model are m_z and s_z the mean and standard deviation of the ratio of the two paths’ amplitudes. Theoretical curves for τ_rms as well as for the mean and standard deviation of τ_rms are plotted for different values of m_z and s_z. These curves are extremely useful for the choice of the parameters of the model for different cases. In order to examine the validity of the new model, measurements from the literature have been collected and compared with the theoretical results. In all cases a very good agreement, according to the X-square criterion, between theoretical and experimental curves has been observed. As a result, the new model can be used by system engineers for the development of wireless high bit-rate digital systems that will not suffer from intersymbol interference.     

Unified BER and optimum threshold analysis of binary modulations in simple and cascaded Rayleigh fading channels with switched combining

Following a unified analytical framework, the bit error rate (BER) of several coherent and non‐coherent binary modulation schemes is derived for a switched diversity system. The two variants of switched combining that have been investigated are switch and stay combining and switch and examine combining. For channel modelling, at first a simple slow flat fading channel is assumed, where the amplitude attenuation obeys the Rayleigh distribution. Later the BER calculations are repeated for cascaded Rayleigh fading channel case. Rayleigh fading is the most popular model for electromagnetic signal propagation in wireless media when both or either of the transmitter/receiver is fixed. On the other hand, when both the transmitter and the receiver are mobile, a cascaded (or double) Rayleigh fading model is better suited. The applicability of these two models, namely simple and cascaded Rayleigh model, has been indicated by several theoretical studies and their suitability is established by various field measurements. In our paper, simple closed‐form BER expressions as a function of switching threshold have been found and optimum switching thresholds have been computed for both these models as well as for both types of diversity combining described earlier. The results presented in this paper can be very useful for communication system designers to analyze link quality of switched diversity assisted systems in various wireless environments. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bit error rate analysis of M-ary DPSK in frequency selective Ricianfading

A simple, exact expression for the probability distribution of differential phase noise is derived for calculating the average bit error rate (BER) of M-ary DPSK in frequency selective Rician fading. The irreducible BER due to multipath delay spread is evaluated for M=2-16 assuming a double-spike delay profile of the Rayleigh faded diffused component and a spectrally raised cosine Nyquist filter response     

900-MHz multipath propagation measurements for US digital cellularradiotelephone

The results of multipath power delay profile measurements of 900-MHz mobile radio channels in Washington, DC, Greenbelt, MD, Oakland, CA, and San Francisco, CA, are presented. The measurements have focused on acquiring worst-case profiles for typical operating locations. The data reveal that at over 98% of the measured locations, root mean square (RMS) delay spreads are less than 12 μs. Urban areas typically have RMS delay spreads on the order of 2-3 μs and continuous multipath power out to excess delays of 5 μs. In hilly residential areas and in open areas within a city, RMS delay spreads are slightly larger, typically having values of 5-7 μs. In very rare instances, reflections from city skylines and mountains can cause RMS delay spreads in excess of 20 μs. The worst-case profiles show resolvable diffuse multipath components at excess delays of 100 μs and amplitudes 18 dB below that of the first arriving signal     

Detection techniques for fading multipath channels with unresolvedcomponents

In this paper we consider noncoherent detection structures for multipath Ricean/Rayleigh fading channels. The multipath components are assumed to be unresolved, with known delays. These delays could have been estimated, for example, by using super-resolution techniques or sounding the channel with a wide-band pulse. We show that the Rayleigh channel optimum receiver (R OPT) consists of an “orthogonalization” (or decorrelation) stage and then it implements an optimum decision rule for a resolved multipath channel. Since the optimum decision rule over Ricean channels is in general too complex for implementation, we propose several suboptimum structures such as the quadratic decorrelation receiver (QDR) and the quadratic receiver (QR). The QDR scheme exploits the decorrelation performed on the input samples. The nonlinear term due to the Ricean specular term is replaced by a quadratic form that is more suitable for implementation. Single-pulse performance of these schemes are studied for commonly used binary modulation formats such as FSK and DPSK. This paper shows that it is possible to have diversity-like gains over Ricean/Rayleigh multipath fading channels with unresolved components even if the channel is not fully tracked. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the importance of using generalizations of RAKE receivers designed to handle the unresolvability condition. For two-path mixed-mode Ricean/Rayleigh channels, it is shown that improved performance can be obtained by using receivers that know the strength of the Ricean specular term     

Performance of differential chaos-shift-keying digital communication systems over a multipath fading channel with delay spread

The performance of the noncoherent differential chaos-shift-keying (DCSK) communication system over a multipath fading channel with delay spread is evaluated. Analytical expressions of the bit error rates are derived under the assumption of an independent Rayleigh fading two-ray channel model. Analytical and simulated results are presented and compared. The multipath performance of the DCSK system is also compared with that of the coherent CSK system as well as conventional generic waveform communication schemes.     

910 MHz urban mobile radio propagation: Multipath characteristics in New York city

Small scale statistics of multipath propagation in a heavily built-up urban mobile radio environment are presented. The statistics cover vehicle travel distances on the order of 30 m along streets. Measuring equipment time delay resolution is about 0.1 µs. In some locations, paths with significant amplitudes are observed with excess delays of 9 to 10 µs. The delay spreads (√second central moment of power delay profile) in this environment are on the order of 2 µs. Often the signal at fixed delays has a Rayleigh-distributed amplitude but large departures from the Rayleigh distribution also occur. From the measurements it appears reasonable to model the urban mobile radio channel as a Gaussian quasi-wide-sense stationary uncorrelated scattering channel within a bandwidth of 10 MHz and for intervals along the street of up to 30 m.     

910 MHz Urban Mobile Radio Propagation: Multipath Characteristics in New York City

Small scale statistics of multipath propagation in a heavily built-up urban mobile radio environment are presented. The statistics cover vehicle travel distances on the order of 30 m along streets. Measuring equipment time delay resolution is about 0.1 μs. In some locations, paths with significant amplitudes are observed with excess delays of 9 to 10 μs. The delay spreads (sqrt{second central moment of power delay profile}) in this environment are on the order of 2 μs. Often the signal at fixed delays has a Rayleighdistributed amplitude but large departures from the Rayleigh distribution also occur. From the measurements it appears reasonable to model the urban mobile radio channel as a Gaussian quasi-wide-sense stationary uncorrelated scattering channel within a bandwidth of 10 MHz and for intervals along the street of up to 30 m.