Mobile and Wireless Communication

Complete Lecture Notes #9

Lecture # 9
By
Student Lecture Notes
 Small-scale Fading

Overview
To study and characterize the rapid fluctuations of the
amplitude of a radio signal in the wireless channel
(FADING).
 FADING

 Fading is the interference of many scattered signals

arriving at an antenna
 Causing rapid fluctuation of the signal strength & its phase
 These signal variations are experienced on a small time
scale
 Dependency of the time scale is on the velocity of either
the Tx ort Rx
FADING
Small Scale Fading

 Describes rapid fluctuations of the amplitude, phase of

multipath delays of a radio signal over short period of time
or travel distance.
 Caused by interference between two or more versions of
the transmitted signal which arrive at the receiver at
slightly different times.
 These waves are called multipath waves and combine at
the receiver antenna to give a resultant signal which can
vary widely in amplitude and phase.
Small Scale Fading (contd.)

 The amount of fading depends on the number of multipath

created.

 The rapidness of fluctuation depends on the rate of change

of multipath (owing to the change in the surroundings
because of Tx or Rx motion.). In this regards the speed of
the mobile, and/or surrounding objects is important.

 The transmission bandwidth of the signal

Multipaths
Multipaths
Multipath Characteristics

 A signal may arrive at receiver:

 At many different times
 From many different directions

 Due to of vector (phasor) addition:

 Signals may reinforce each other
 Signals may cancel each other

 This results in constructive or destructive interference and

signal strength varies from place to place
Multipath Characteristics
 The carrier wavelength in cellular is 15 - 40 cm. Small
changes in differential delays due to Mobile Station
mobility will cause large changes in the phase of arriving
plane waves.
Three Effects of the multipaths:
 Interference of plane waves with varying phase is manifested by large
amplitude fluctuations.
 Varying Doppler shifts of the Multipaths components causes Doppler
spread.
 Time dispersion (echoes)
Discrete-Time Impulse Response
Model for a Multipath Channel
Factors Influencing Small Scale
Fading
Multipath propagation
 Presence of reflecting objects and scatterers cause multiple
versions of the signal to arrive at the receiver
• With different amplitudes and time delays
• Causes the total signal at receiver to fade or distort
Speed of mobile
 Cause Doppler shift at each multipath component
 Causes random frequency modulation
Factors Influencing Small Scale
Fading
Speed of surrounding objects
 Causes time-varying Doppler shift on the multipath
components
Transmission bandwidth of the channel
 The transmitted radio signal bandwidth and bandwidth of
the multipath channel affect the received signal properties:
• if amplitude fluctuates or not
• If the signal is distorted or not
Doppler Effect

 When a transmitter or receiver is moving, the frequency of

the received signal changes, i.e. it is different than the
frequency of transmission. This is called Doppler Effect.
 The change in frequency is called Doppler Shift and it
depends on
• The relative velocity of the receiver with respect to
transmitter
• The frequency (or wavelength) of transmission
• The direction of traveling with respect to the
direction of the arriving signal
Doppler Frequency Shift
 Each component of the received multipath signals arrives
from different direction and contributes a different value to
the Doppler Spreading

 This effectively increases the Bandwidth of the received

signal

 The received frequency, fr, is offset by the transmitted

frequency, ft, by a factor of Doppler Frequency, fd
Doppler Shift
Doppler Shift Effects
 The composite received signal of various multipaths has
different Doppler Shifts on individual paths
 Signals coming from ahead of mobile will be shifted up in
frequency and those coming from behind will be shifted
down in frequency.
 In practical situations, the magnitude of Doppler shift can
be as much as ±100Hz in the Cellular Mobiles of
frequency range of 800-900MHz, with mobile speeds of
80-100Km/hr.
 This shift in frequency can be modeled as a random
process of phase/frequency modulation
Delay Spread

 In digital systems, Delay Spread causes intersymbol-

interference

 Therefore, there is a limit on the maximum symbol rate of

digital multipath channel

 Depending on the environment, the delay spread can be

between 0.1 to 2 micro-seconds