Wireless Communications

Lecture 7-8
Propagation Modelling

Multipath Fading
 Backgrounds
Large Scale Propagation
• Path loss, Shadowing etc
• Predicts mean received signal strength at large Tx-
Rx distances (hundreds of thousands of meters)
• Importance
Proper site planning
Small-scale Propagation
• Fading
• Characterize the rapid fluctuation over the short
distances or time
• Importance
Proper receiver design to handle fluctuations
Backgrounds
 Multipath fading
Multiple reflected waves arrive at the receiver

• Different waves have different phases.

• These waves my cancel or amplify each other.
• This results in a fluctuating (“fading”) amplitude of the
total received signal.
 Small-scale fading
• Wireless communication typically happens at very
high carrier frequency. (eg. fc = 900 MHz or 1.8 GHz
for cellular)
• Multipath fading due to constructive and destructive
interference of the transmitted waves.
• Channel varies when mobile moves a distance of the
order of the carrier wavelength. This is about 0.3 m
for 900 Mhz cellular.
• For vehicular speeds, this translates to channel
variation of the order of 100 Hz.
• Primary driver behind wireless communication
system design.
 Factors influencing Small-scale fading

• Multipath propagation
signal arrives at Rx through different paths
• Speed of mobile
induces Doppler shift
• Speed of surrounding objects

• The transmission B/W of the signal

 Doppler Shift
Doppler shift is given by the apparent change in
frequency
fd=(1/2π) (ΔФ/ Δt)
Where ΔФ is the change in received signal due to
multipath
As ΔФ=2π Δl/λ where Δl=v Δt cosθ so
ΔФ=2π/λ (v Δt cosθ) therefore
fd =(v/ λ) cosθ
 Doppler Shift
Consider a transmitter which radiates a sinusoidal
carrier frequency of 1850 MHz. for a vehicle moving
60mph, compute the received carrier frequency if
the mobile is moving
a) Directly towards the transmitter
b) Directly away from the transmitter
c) In a direction which is perpendicular to the direction
of the arrival of the transmitted signal.
 Impulse response of a multipath channel

Small-scale fading can be directly related to the impulse

response of a mobile radio channel. The mobile radio
channel may be modeled as a linear filter with a time
varying impulse response, where the time variation is
due to receiver motion in space.
x(t) h(d,t) y(d,t)
Suppose a receiver moves along a constant velocity ‘v’.
• Let h(d,t) be the impulse response and
• x(t) represent the transmitted signal then
• Y(d,t) is the received signal.
So y(d,t) = x(t) * h(d,t)
 Impulse response
• The received signal y(t) can be expressed as a
convolution of the transmitted signal x(t) with the
channel impulse response h(t,τ).
• Where h(t,τ) is the channel impulse response which
completely characterizes the channel and is a
function of both t and τ.
• t is the time variation due to motion and τ is the
multipath delay for a fixed value of t.
 Impulse response
Since the received signal in a multipath channel consist of a series
of attenuated, phase shifted replicas of the transmitted signal,
the base band impulse response of a multipath channel can be
expressed as

hb (t,τ) =∑ai (t,τ) Exp[ j(2πfc τi(t) + Φi(t, τ))] σ(τ- τi(t))

Where ai(t,τ) = amplitude of the ith multipath component

τi(t)= is the ith excess delay and
2πfc τi(t) + Φi(t, τ) represents the total phase shift experienced by
the ith multipath component.and
σ(τ- τi(t) is the unit impulse function which measures the specific
multipath bins that have components at time t and excess delay
τ
 Excess delay bins
• It is useful to discretize the multipath delay axis τ into equal time
delay segments called excess delay bins
• Any no of multipath signals received within the ith bin are
represented by a single resolvable multipath component having
delay τi
• Each bin time delay width is τi+1 – τi where τ0=0
• ∆τ= width of time delay bin, for i=0 τ0=0, τ1= ∆τ and τi=i ∆τ
• Excess delay is the relative delay of the ith multipath component
as compared to the first arriving component
• The maximum excess delay of the channel is given by N∆τ.
 Power delay profile
For small-scale channel modeling, the power delay
profile of the channel is found by taking the spatial
average of the │hb(t, τ)│2 over the local area. By
making several local area measurements in different
locations, it is possible to build an ensemble of power
delay profiles, each representing a possible small
scale multipath channel state.

P(τ)= limt→∞∫ │hb(t, τ)│2 dt

.
 Power delay profile
Power delay profile in practice
• Requires channel measurement and data analysis
• Different delay profile is generated for different
application at different environments e.g. Urban,
indoor, rural etc……… for 900MHz, 1800, 2400MHz

• Power delay profile of multipath channel is calculated

using techniques like direct pulse measurement,
spread spectrum sliding correlator measurement and
swept frequency measurement techniques
 Time-dispersion parameters
In order to compare different multipath channels and to
develop some general design guidelines for wireless
systems, some of the parameters are used to
quantify the multipath channels.
These parameters include:
• Mean excess-delay
• Rms delay spread and
• Excess delay spread.
All these parameters are calculated from the power
delay profile of the multipath channel.
 Time-dispersion parameters
• Determined from power delay profile
• Treat the power delay profile as a probability mass function and
calculate the mean, second moment and standard deviation for
this.

• Mean excess delay

This is the first moment of the power delay profile (The first
moment, if it exists, is the expectation of X, i.e. the mean of the
probability distribution of X ) and is defined as the
τˉ=E[τ ]=∑Pk τk=∑[ak2/∑ ak2]τk
Substituting for ak2 as P(τ) we get
τˉ =∑k [P (τk)/∑k P (τk)]τk
 Time dispersion parameters
RMS Delay Spread
It is the square root of the second central moment of the
power delay profile and
second moment can be represented as
τˉ2=E[τ2 ]=∑Pk τk2=∑[ak2/∑ ak2]τk2
Now the second central moment is the variance, the
square root of which is the standard deviation, σ. We
call it Rms delay spread.
σt =√ τˉ2- (τˉ) 2
 Time dispersion parameters
Maximum Excess Delay
This is defined to be the time delay during which
multipath energy falls to X dB below the maximum.
Mathematically expressed as
Max excess delay (X dB) = τx – τ0
Where τ0 is the first arriving signal and τx is the
maximum delay at which the multipath component is
within X dB of the strongest arriving multipath signal.
 Coherence bandwidth
• Derived from the rms delay spread
• Statistical measure of the range of frequencies over which the
channel can be considered as flat,
• .Flat channel means channel which passes all spectral
components with appr equal gain and linear phase.
• Maximum allowable difference in frequency while amplitudes
are still strongly correlated.
• Two sinusoids with frequency difference greater than Bc, are
affected quiet differently by the channel.
• Bc = 1/50 στ if Bc is defined as coherence B/W over which
frequency correlation function is above 0.9 and
• Bc = 1/5 στ if Bc if the frequency correlation function is relaxed to
0.5 and
 Time dispersion parameters
Example
Calculate the mean excess
delay, rms delay spread and the
maximum excess delay for the
multipath profile given in the
figure.
Estimate the 50% coherence
bandwidth of the channel.
Would this channel be suitable
for AMPS or GSM without the
use of an equalizer ?