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Chapter: Wireless Channels

Section: Multipath Fading, Nakagami fading

Rice and Nakagami fading are two generalisations of the model for Rayleigh fading. In literature, often a Nakagami model is used for analytical simplicity in
cases where Rician fading would be a more appropriate model. In contrast to common belief, the Nakagami model is not an appropriate approximation for
Rician fading. It has an essentially different behaviour for deep fades, such that results on outage probabilities or error rates can differ by orders of magnitude.

Rician Models Nakagami Models

To describe microcellular propagation, the Rayleigh model lacked the effect of a The Nakagami fading model was initially proposed
dominant line-of-sight component, and Rician model appeared to be more because it matched empirical results for short wave
appropriate. For analytical and numerical evaluation of system performance, the ionospheric propagation. In current wireless
expressions for Rician fading are less convenient, mainly due to the occurrence of a communication, the main role of the Nakagami model
Bessel function in the Rician probability density function of received signal can be summarized as follows
amplitude. Approximations by a Nakagami distribution, with simpler mathematical
expressions have become popular. It describes the amplitude of received signal after
maximum ratio diversity combining.
The sum of multiple independent and identically
distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh-fading signals have a
Nakagami distributed signal amplitude. This is
particularly relevant to model interference from
multiple sources.
The Nakagami distribution matches some
empirical data better than other models
The Rician and the Nakagami model behave
approximately equivalently near their mean value.
This observation has been used in many recent
papers to advocate the Nakagami model as an
approximation for situations where a Rician
model would be more appropriate.

Comparison
In the analysis of outage probabilities or error rates, it is the behavior of the model for signals in deep fades that has the determining effect. As the behavior of
the probability density functions for amplitudes near zero differ significantly, approximations based on behavior near the mean are inappropriate.

Rician and Nakagami models have a fundamentally different density for deep fades. Modeling a Rician fading signal by a Nakagami distribution of the
amplitude leads to overly optimistic results, and discrepancies can be many orders of magnitude. That is, we challenge the accuracy of the last application of
the model in the above list.

Distribution of received power

A typical radio channel exhibits multipath reception, which causes fading. The mathematical evaluation of this paper addresses narrowband systems, in which
the channel transfer function is sufficiently constant over the signal bandwidth. This corresponds to the assumption that Intersymbol Interference does not play
a major role in the performance of the radio links. However, the models also play a role in wideband systems, in which each resolvable bin of reflected waves
can be modeled to exhibit flat fading.

Rice Nakagami
Rician fading assumes a dominant line-of-sight component and a large set of i.i.d. For Nakagami fading, the instantaneous power has the
reflected waves. Reflected waves arrive with a random phase offset and the gamma pdf
accumulation can be modeled as a phasor addition of signals with random amplitude
and phase. This assumption leads to a Gaussian Inphase and Quadrature component,
and a corresponding Rician amplitude. It has been shown that the instantaneous power
pi received from the i-th user, with pi = ri2/2 and ri the signal amplitude, has the
probability density function (pdf)
where G(m) is the gamma function, with G(m +
1) = m! for integer shape factors m. The mean value is
. In the special case that m = 1, Rayleigh
fading is recovered, while for larger m the spread of
the signal strength is less, and the pdf converges to a
where the Rician K-factor is defined as the ratio of the power in the dominant
delta function for increasing m.
component and the scattered (multipath) power, is the total local-mean power in the
dominant and scattered waves, and I0(.) denotes the modified Bessel function of the
first kind and order zero.

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In the special case that the dominant component is zero (K = 0) or m = 1, Rayleigh fading occurs, with an exponentially distributed power, viz.,

The Nakagami model is sometimes used to approximate the pdf of the power of a Rician fading signal. Matching the first and second moments of the Rician and
Nakagami pdfs gives

which tends to m = K/2 for large K.

For Rician fading, the probability distribution at small powers is For Nakagami fading, we have

Here denotes the probability that pi < pth .

The results are strikingly different for m larger than one. As the relation between K and m was based merely on the first and second moments, it is likely to be
most accurate for values close to the mean. Outage probabilities however highly depend on the tail of the pdf for small power of the wanted signal. The
probability of deep fades (small pi) differs for these two models, so an approximation the pdf of a Rician-fading wanted signal by a Nakagami pdf can be highly
inaccurate: Results differ even in first-order behavior. For Rician fading, the slope of the outage probability versus C/I is the same as for Rayleigh fading. For
Nakagami fading, the slope is steeper, similar to that of m-branch diversity reception of a Rayleigh fading signal.

Method for Link Evaluation

The nakagami approximation appeared less suitable to approximate a Rician channel. Nevertheless other methods are available to make reasonable
approximations in numerical evaluations of the outage probability in interference-limited situations, while restricting the complexity of calculations.

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