Wireless Communication Networks and

Systems
First Edition

Laboratory I
Fading in Wireless
Communication Systems

Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Introduction
• The purpose of this laboratory is to illustrate mathematical
modelling of multi-path fading in wireless communication
systems
• The laboratory consists of
– an introduction to fading
– a short summary of the theory that has been developed
and exercises
– theoretical and programming tasks in Matlab.
• The Pre-lab assignments should be solved before
performing the laboratory tasks in Matlab
Background
• Radio waves propagate from a transmitting antenna and
travel through space undergoing absorption, reflection,
diffraction and scattering
• They are greatly affected by the ground terrain, the
atmosphere, and the objects in their path, like buildings,
bridges, hills, trees, etc. These multiple physical phenomena
are responsible for most of the characteristic features of the
received signal.
• In most of the mobile or cellular systems, the height of the
mobile antenna may be smaller than the surrounding
structures. Thus, the existence of a direct or line-of-sight
path between transmitter and receiver is highly unlikely
Background
• In such a case, propagation is mainly due to reflection and
scattering from the buildings and by diffraction over
and/or around them. So, in practice the transmitting signal
arrives at the receiver via several paths with different time
delays creating a multipath situation.
• At the receiver, these multi-path waves with randomly
distributed amplitudes and phases combine to give a
resultant signal that fluctuates in time and space. Therefore,
a receiver at one location may have a signal that is much
different from the signal at another location, only a short
distance away, because of the change in the phase
relationship among the incoming radio waves.
Background
• The phenomenon of random fluctuations in the received
signal level is termed fading, an important topic in wireless
communications.
Fading
• Fading channel can be characterized by
power in the dominant path
𝐾
power in the scattered path
𝐾 0: channel is Rayleigh
𝐾 ∞: channel is AWGN
0 𝐾 ∞: channel is Rican
• In Rayleigh fading, there is no line-of-sight path between
the transmitting antenna and the mobile, which means that
the mobile receives a number of reflected and scattered
waves. The instantaneous received signal is a random
variable because of the varying path lengths.
Fading
• The signal received on path 𝑖 is characterized by
𝑠 𝑡 𝐴 𝑡 cos 2𝜋𝑓 𝑡 𝜃 𝑡 𝑖 0,1, ⋯ , 𝑁
• The total signal received by a mobile, 𝑠 𝑡 , is the sum of the
signals received on the different paths, and can be
expressed as

𝑠 𝑡 𝐴 𝑡 cos 2𝜋𝑓 𝑡 𝜃 𝑡 1

• The phase 𝜃 𝑡 , depends on the varying path lengths,

changing by 2π when the path length changes by a
wavelength. This means that the phases can be modelled by
random variables, uniformly distributed over 0 2π .
Fading
• Equation 1 must be modified when there is relative
motion between the transmitter and receiver.
• If the received signal on path 𝑖, 𝑠 𝑡 , arrives at the receiver
from an angle 𝛼 relative to the direction of motion of the
mobile, the doppler shift of this signal is given by
𝑣𝑓
△𝑓 cos 𝛼 2
𝑐
• The received signal 𝑠 𝑡 can now be written as

𝑠 𝑡 𝐴 𝑡 cos 2𝜋𝑓 𝑡 2𝜋 △ 𝑓 𝑡 𝜃 𝑡 3
Fading
• It is an advantage to describe bandpass signals with
baseband signals that have their energy concentrated
around zero frequency because bandpass signals are not
convenient to analyze.
• In addition, it is easier to handle low-pass signals in
hardware and software implementations of signal
processing algorithms. Equation 3 can be rewritten using
the low-pass signals 𝑥 𝑡 and 𝑦 𝑡 which are often denoted
the in-phase I and quadrature Q components of the
signal
𝑠 𝑡 𝑥 𝑡 cos 2𝜋𝑓 𝑡 𝑦 𝑡 sin 2𝜋𝑓 𝑡 4
Fading
• The received signal can also be expressed as
𝑠 𝑡 ℜ𝔢 𝑧 𝑡 𝑒 5
where the complex envelope of 𝑠 𝑡 is a low-pass signal given
by 𝑧 𝑡 𝑥 𝑡 𝑗𝑦 𝑡 6
• The envelope of the signal 𝑧 𝑡 is denoted by 𝑟 𝑡

𝑟 𝑡 𝑥 𝑡 𝑦 𝑡 7
and the phase of the signal is denoted by 𝜃 𝑡
𝑦 𝑡
𝜃 𝑡 atan 8
𝑥 𝑡
• The in-phase 𝑥 𝑡 and quadrature 𝑦 𝑡 become uncorrelated
Gaussian processes if the received signal 𝑠 𝑡 consists of
many components with the same statistical properties.
Fading
• If the mean values of 𝑥 𝑡 and 𝑦 𝑡 are equal to zero, the
joint probability distribution function pdf can be
expressed as
1
𝑝 𝑥, 𝑦 𝑒 9
2𝜋𝜎
• The joint pdf of 𝑟 𝑡 and 𝜃 𝑡 is given by
𝑟
𝑝 𝑟, 𝜃 𝑒 10
2𝜋𝜎
• The marginal density function mdf of 𝑟 𝑡 , denoted by
𝑝 𝑟 is often called the Rayleigh distribution in the
literature:
𝑟
𝑝 𝑟 𝑒 11
𝜎
Fading
• It can be shown that the average power of the received
signal 𝛾 𝑟 𝑡 is exponentially distributed with mean
𝛾 2𝜎
1
𝑝 𝛾 𝑒 12
𝛾
Fading
• If there is a direct line-of-sight path between the
transmitting antenna and the mobile, Equation 3 can be
modified to include this effect

𝑠 𝑡 𝐴 cos 2𝜋𝑓 𝑡 2𝜋 △ 𝑓 𝑡 𝐴 𝑡 cos 2𝜋𝑓 𝑡 𝜃 𝑡

13
where the constant 𝐴 is the strength of the direct component
and △ 𝑓 is the Doppler shift along the direct path.
• The envelope 𝑟 𝑡 is in this case Nakagami-Rice distributed
or just Rican distributed with the mdf

𝑝 𝑟 𝑒 𝐼 14
where 𝐼 is the zero-order modified Bessel function.
Pre-lab Assigment
• Derive the expression for the doppler shift △ 𝑓 in Equation
2 , and explain under which circumstances△ 𝑓 takes on
its minimum and maximum values.
• Calculate the expressions for the in-phase 𝑥 𝑡 and
quadrature 𝑦 𝑡 in Equation 4 using trigonometric
expansion of the cosine function in Equation 3 .
– Hint: cos 𝑎 𝑏 cos 𝑎 cos 𝑏 sin 𝑎 sin 𝑏
• Derive the joint pdf of 𝑟 𝑡 and 𝜃 𝑡 in Equation 10 from the
joint pdf 𝑝 𝑥, 𝑦 defined in Equation 9.
– Hint: use the transformations 𝑥 𝑡 𝑟 𝑡 cos 𝜃 𝑡 and
𝑦 𝑡 𝑟 𝑡 sin 𝜃 𝑡
Pre-lab Assigment
• Derive the mdf of the envelope, 𝑝 𝑟 , in Equation 11 from
the joint pdf 𝑝 𝑟, 𝜃 , defined in Equation 10.
• Calculate the probability that the envelope 𝑟 𝑡 is below a
value 𝑎
• Calculate mean 𝑟 , second moment 𝑟 and the variance of
the envelope 𝑟 𝑡
– Hint: Gaussian integral

𝑒 𝑑𝑥 𝜋
Matlab
• Write a Matlab function r,p ray_mdf n, sigma that
returns the mdf of a Rayleigh distributed stochastic
variable. The function returns 𝑝 𝑟 defined in Equation 11
for 0 𝑟 𝑛𝜎. The input parameters are scalars and the
output parameters are vectors.
• Use the graph to estimate the probability that the envelope
𝑟 𝑡 is below the variance. Compare the returned value
with the theoretical value.
• Write a function which computes the variance of the
Rayleigh distribution. The input parameters are obtained
from the ray_mdf function. Compare the returned value
with the theoretical variance..
Matlab
• Write a function t, s ray_gen N, a, b, fc, fs, v, tau which
generates the 𝑠 𝑡 signal in Equation 3 for a mobile unit
travelling at m/s. The path amplitudes 𝐴 𝑡 are generated
using the Weibull distribution with parameters alpha and
beta, see the wblrnd function. Furthermore, the carrier and
sampling frequencies are denoted by fc and fs respectively.
The signal should be generated for a time interval of tau
seconds. The output parameters t and s contain the
sampling times and the corresponding signal values.
Execute the ray_gen function with parameters N 10, a 1,
b 3, fc 900 MHz, fs 4fc, v 25 m/s and tau 1μs. Plot
𝑠 𝑡 .
Matlab
• Use the demod function to demodulate the signal 𝑠 𝑡 to get
the in-phase 𝑥 𝑡 and quadrature 𝑦 𝑡 components. Plot
𝑠 𝑡 , 𝑥 𝑡 , 𝑦 𝑡 and the envelope 𝑟 𝑡 using the subplot
command.
• Plot the received signal power 𝛾 𝑡 and the mean signal
power 𝛾 , both expressed in dB, in the same graph. Use the
graph to estimate the outage probability at the level 𝛾 .
• Write a function t, s rice_gen N, a, b, fc, fs, v, tau, A0
which generates the 𝑠 𝑡 signal in Equation 13. Execute the
function with the same parameter values that was used for
the ray_gen function above. Compare the mean received
signal power for the two cases when A0 2.8.