Simulation of frequency-flat fading

channels
Anil Kandangath
EEE-558 Wireless Communications
Project 1
October 13, 2003

Contents
1 Introduction 2

2 Fading Channels 2

3 Simulation of Frequency-Flat Fading Channels 2

3.1 Filtered Gaussian Noise Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2 Jakes’ Model (Sum of Sinusoids method) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

4 Implementation of Channel Model 4

5 Conclusions 8

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1 Introduction
We wish to study the effect of data transmission over frequency-flat fading
channels with or without channel state estimates. We use two methods, namely
Jakes model and the Filtered Gaussian Noise model to simulate a fading channel
with a given doppler power spectrum. For each such channel we transmit data
using uncoded BPSK and QPSK modulated symbols and perform Monte-Carlo
simulations to estimate the bit error probability (BER) as a function of the
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We change the channel properties to study the
effect of the rapidity of channel variation over the performance of our channel
estimation methods. We also change the period of the pilot signals to study it’s
effect on our channel performance.

2 Fading Channels
The delays associated with different signal paths in a multipath fading channel
change in an unpredictable manner and can only be characterized statistically.
When there are a large number of paths, the central limit theorem can be applied
to model the time-variant impulse response of the channel as a complex-valued
Gaussian random process. When the impulse response is modeled as a zero-
mean complex-valued Gaussian process, the channel is said to be a Rayleigh
fading channel. If the coherence bandwidth of channel is much greater than the
bandwidth of the signal, the channel is said to be frequency-flat since it affects
all signal frequencies in almost the same manner. Our simulation concerns such
frequency-flat fading channels. Channels can also be characterized as slow or
fast fading.

3 Simulation of Frequency-Flat Fading Chan-

nels
We simulate the frequency-flat fading channel using two methods, namely the
Filtered Gaussian model and the Jakes’ model. We perform the simulation with
and without the channel state information. For the latter case, we send periodic
pilot symbols which are known to the receiver so that the channel characteristics
can be estimated to aid the detection process. Obviously a balance has to be
struck between the need to estimate the channel accurately and to send as
few pilot symbols as possible to improve transmission efficiency, we study the
effect of changing the pilot interval over the channel estimates. We perform the

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simulation over slow fading channels by choosing the doppler spectrum Bd of
the channel so that it is smaller than the bandwidth W of the signal and then
vary the doppler spectrum so that the effect of rapidity of channel variation can
be understood.

3.1 Filtered Gaussian Noise Model

The Filtered Gaussian Noise model uses two independent white Gaussian
noise sources which are filtered using low pass filters. For discrete-time simu-
lation the low-pass filter h(t) is usually implemented as a first-order low-pass
digital filter which models the fading process as a Markov process. Stüber [1]
notes that this method has the limitation that it can produce only rational
forms of the Doppler spectrum whereas the Doppler spectrum is typically non-
rational. The advantage of using low-pass filtered WGN is the ease by which
we can generate multiple uncorrelated fading waveforms by using uncorrelated
noise sources.

Figure 1: Channel output (Filtered Gaussian) when fm T = 0.001 (slow

varying ).

We simulate the channel as a Markov process. An alternate method would be

to use a low pass filter( such as a Butterworth or Chebyshev filter) to achieve
the same effect.As suggested in [1], we may use the following parameters to
define the Gaussian random process in each step of the Markov process.
p
ζ = 2 − cos(2πfm T ) − (2 − cos2πfm T )2 − 1 (1)
We choose the value of σ 2 as

(1 + ζ) Ωp
σ2 = (2)
(1 − ζ) 2

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Figure 2: Channel output (Filtered Gaussian) when fm T = 0.1 (fast
varying ).

The Markov model as used in this simulation implements the channel as

(gI,k+1 , gQ,k+1 ) = ζ(gI,k , gQ,k ) + (1 − ζ)(w1,k , w2,k ) (3)

3.2 Jakes’ Model (Sum of Sinusoids method)

The Jakes model implements the channel as a sum of sinusoids as defined by
the following equation

g(t) = gI (t) + jgQ (t)

√PM √
= 2[2 n=1 cosβn cos2πfn t + 2cosαcos2πfm t]
PM √
+j[2 n=1 cosβn cos2πfn t + 2sinαcos2πfm t] (4)

where the parameters are as defined in [1].

In our simulation we use 8 sinusoids to generate the channel where the real
and imaginary parts of the complex channel are defined by the sinusoids and
their phase shifted versions. The plots show the variation caused by the channel
as fm is changed. On increasing fm the channel becomes fast varying and causes
more signal distortion which bears out our concepts.

4 Implementation of Channel Model

The channel simulation uses both uncoded BPSK and QPSK modulated sig-
nals over the fading channels designed. We can either assume complete Channel

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Figure 3: Channel output (Jakes) when fm T = 0.001 (slow varying ).

Figure 4: Channel output (Jakes) when fm T = 0.1 (fast varying ).

State Information (CSI) or estimate the channel using pilot symbols. For the
complete CSI case,

r(t) = h(t)s(t) + w(t)

r(t) w(t)
or = s(t) + (5)
h(t) h(t)

Here r(t) and h(t) are the complex valued received signals and channel fading
coefficients respectively while w(t) is additive white gaussian noise. Since the
channel h(t) is known to us, detection is a simple affair of checking the signal
level. For QPSK, we check the quadrant that the received signal r(t)/h(t) lies
in to make our decision.
If we do not have complete CSI, we can estimate the channel using a variety
of methods. The method used here involves transmission of pilot signals peri-

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 Figure 5: BER vs. SNR using a BPSK signal for fm T = 0.001

Figure 6: BER vs. SNR using a QPSK signal for fm T = 0.001

odically to estimate the channel state. If the pilot symbols are y1 , y2 , ...yL , then
the received signals are of the form

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 r1 = α1 y1 + w1
r2 = α2 y2 + w2
...
rL = αL yL + wL (6)

If we choose the doppler spectrum such that the symbol time T  1/Bd
where Bd represents the doppler spread, we can take advantage of the slow
fading properties of the channel to assume that α1 = α2 = ... = αL = α. Thus

L
X L
X L
X
ri = α yi + wi (7)
i=1 i=1 i=1
P
Since w(t) is white gaussian noise, we can assume that wi → 0 so that
P
ri
α= P (8)
yi
By carefully choosing the number of pilot symbols and the ’period’ of the

Figure 7: Comparison of actual channel and estimated channel for

different pilot intervals.(The smooth curve represents the actual channel )

symbols, it is possible to get a very good estimate of the channel so that the
detection is almost as good as that in the complete CSI case. We use data
transmitted over an AWGN channel without fading as our benchmark. The
channel coefficients are normalized in our implementation.

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Figure 8: BER vs. SNR using a BPSK signal for fm T = 0.001 using
channel estimation

Figure 9: BER vs. SNR using a QPSK signal for fm T = 0.001 using
channel estimation

5 Conclusions
We use a simple AWGN channel as our benchmark for all BER vs. SNR plots.
For the AWGN case, the BER reduces with increasing SNR as expected and
goes to zero for SNRs above approximately 7dB. We plot the channel envelopes
for two different Doppler spectrums when a sinusoidal signal is transmitted. We

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notice that the fading and distortion increases as we increase the Doppler spread
fm , which is to be expected since an increase in fm causes more rapid variation
and hence more fading in the channel.
From the plots of BER vs. SNR for the channel where CSI is available, we find
that the BER decreases with increasing SNR as expected and both the Jakes
model and the Filtered Gaussian Noise model perform in a similar way. The
Monte Carlo simulations are performed over 105 bits to get a good estimate
of the BER. It is seen that the BER is much greater than the ones obtained
when only AWGN is present which is due to the random distortions produced
by multipath fading.
We also obtain the plots for the case where CSI is not available and the channel

Figure 10: BER vs. SNR using a QPSK signal for fm T = 0.0001 using
channel estimation.(The channel is more slow varying than the that in Fig 9
and shows a better BER)

has to be estimated using pilot signals. We notice that the channel estimation
is better when the channel is not fast varying. Also, if the period of the pilot
signals is small, the estimation is more accurate. This is due to the fact that
the channel estimates obtained by sending a few pilot signals gives the average
nature of the channel for the duration of the pilot signals.
If the channel is slow varying, we can expect the estimates to give a good ap-
proximation, else the estimates are not valid. Similarly, a smaller period for
the pilot signals signifies a more frequent estimation of the channel. Obviously,
a more frequent estimation will give a better approximation of the channel as
seen in the plots. As we change the Doppler spectrum to make the channel vary

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faster, we need to reduce the pilot period to get better estimates. We also see
that the BER is less when we have ideal channel state estimates.

References
[1] Gordon L. Stüber, ”Principles of Mobile Communication,” 2ed., Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 2001.

[2] Theodore S. Rappaport, ”Wireless Communications: Principle and Prac-

tice,” 2ed., Pearson Education, 2002.

[3] John G. Proakis, Digital Communications, 4ed., McGraw-Hill, 2001.

[4] R. Clarke, ”A statistical theory of mobile radio reception,” Bell System

Tech. J., Vol. 47, pp. 957-1000, 1968.

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