UNIT 3

WIRELESS COMMUNICATION
(MINOR COURSE FOR IV ICE, CSE)
RECAP ON MULTIPATH PROPAGATION

 Each of these paths have distinct

 Amplitude
 Delay(runtime of the signal)
 Direction of departure from
transmitter
 Direction of arrival
 The components have different
phase shifts wrt each other
PATH LOSS PREDICTION OVER HILLY TERRAIN
PATH LOSS PREDICTION OVER HILLY TERRAIN

 In Hilly terrain there are two situations

 Non-Obstructed reception due to the flat terrain
 Obstructed reception due to hilly terrain
POINT TO POINT PREDICTION UNDER NON-OBSTRUCTIVE
CONDITIONS

 Assume there are no obstacles between base station and mobile unit
 the received signal consists of two types of waves when the path length
is above the radio horizon(Farthest possible point of propagation)
 direct wave
 reflected wave
 when the path length becomes longer in mobile radio environment, incidence angle
becomes smaller
 i.e. antenna heights at both Base station(BS) and Mobile Unit(MU) are generally
much shorter than the propagation path length
 when the distance exceeds the radio horizon distance, there is an additional loss
 prediction is hence used only for propagation path length above the radio horizon
 the maximum coverage of the BS is based on the radio horizon distance, which can
also be called as radius of coverage
 𝑅𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑢𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒 ≤ 2ℎ 𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑠

≤ 2ℎ΄ 𝑘𝑚
ℎ  BS antenna height in feet
ℎ΄  BS antenna height in meters
 Beyond radio horizon the signal attenuation will be greater
REFLECTION POINTS ON HILLY TERRAIN

 Two types of transmission links are shown

based on the different locations of reflected
points
 TYPE A
 Has the BS situated on the flat ground and mobile
unit moving on a hilly slope
 TYPE B
 Has the BS situated on top of the hill and mobile
unit travelling on flat ground
 For each of these two types there are two kinds of
reflected waves.
 Specular reflected waves
 Diffused reflected waves
The specular reflected wave retains the major portion of the
reflected energy.
 Can be easily identified because the reflection point
is always closer to the mobile unit than the other
ℎ1 ʹ ℎ2
reflection points 𝑃𝑟 = 𝑃𝑡 𝑑2
ʹ
 ℎ1 antenna height of the base station which is the
effective antenna height
MEASUREMENT OF EFFECTIVE ANTENNA HEIGHT

 Extend the slope ground plane on which the specular

reflection point lies to the base station site
 Measure the antenna height from the antenna to the
extension of slope ground plane as in Fig.
 For case A :
 Effective antenna height is greater than the actual
antenna height
 For case B
 Effective antenna height is less than the actual antenna
height
OBSTRUCTED RECEPTION DUE TO HILLY TERRAIN

 Point to Point prediction under obstructive

condition-Shadow loss
 As MS moves behind the high rise building , the
amplitude of the component that propagates along the
direct connection (LOS) between MS and BS greatly
decreases
 This is due to the fact that MS is now in Radio
shadow.
 Any wave going through or around the building is
greatly attenuated , an effect called Shadowing
 Shadowing occur not only for LOS but also for any
MPC.
 Obstacle do not throw “Sharp” shadows. The
transition from the “light” (LOS) zone to the
“dark”(shadowed) zone is gradual.
 Mobile has to move over large distances (few meters
to several hundreds of meters) to move from light to
dark zone.
 Hence shadowing gives rise to Large-scale fading.
 In mobile radio environment, the hills, mountains, or  Under these conditions, no effective antenna height
any other obstructive objects are much larger than the will be involved .
wavelength that the Knife edge diffraction solution
 Four parameters require are
applies
2 1 1
 ν= −ℎ𝑝 +
λ 𝑑1 𝑑2

ν Fresnel-kirchoff diffraction parameter

ℎ𝑝 height of the knife edge
𝑑1 distance from the knife edge to BS
𝑑2 distance from knife edge to mobile unit
DESIGN PARAMETERS AT THE BASE STATION

 Antenna Locations
 Antenna Spacing and Heights
 Frequency dependency
 Antenna orientation dependency
 Antenna height/separation dependency
 Antenna Configurations
ANTENNA LOCATIONS
 It is difficult to select an optimum antenna location
for a BS
 Signal strength coverage at a distance such as 13km
from the BS antenna does not exhibit a uniform
pattern
 irregular pattern is due to irregular terrain
configuration
 Another aspect is avoiding interference
 BS antenna location plan should consider both
 Coverage
 Interference with other antennas
 For a larger system, all the potential BS location
should be considered at the same time
 If one BS is moved to a different position, then all
the other station locations are affected
Several steps in choosing a BS location
 1. Decide on the reception level at the cell boundary
 This is based on the features of
 Mobile transreceiver
 System performance required
( Assume that a level of -100dBm is at the coverage boundary of a cell)
 Then according to the given power
 Antenna height
 antenna gain
 Terrain configuration of area
 Cell size
Can be determined.eg. For a suburban area, the radius of the cell will be 16km for a reception level of -100dBm
 2. Choose the location where the land is usually available for a first choice BS.
 3. Follow the new path loss prediction model to make a point-to-point prediction
 An equal strength contour can be drawn on the map

Fig. Cell site location design

 4. Choose other locations and draw -100dBm equal strength contours of them. The equal strength contours should
have roughly the same portion overlapping as in Fig. (A)
 Avoid equal strength contour conditions as shown in Fig (B)
TWO GUIDELINES FOR CHOOSING A LOCATION ARE:
Fig. Improper set up

1. DO NOT SELECT A HIGH SPOT

 This is to avoid interference with other cells
 Avoid weakening signal strength in its own cell
 Fig.: Proper set up, the rule of setting up BS antennas in hilly areas

SELECT A LOW SPOT BUT INCREASE THE BASE STATION ANTENNA HEIGHT
ANTENNA SPACING AND ANTENNA HEIGHTS

 Antenna orientation dependency

 Antenna height/separation dependency
 Frequency dependency
Introduction:
 two affects that make mobile radio communication very difficult
 Multipath fading
 excessive pathloss
 At BS,
 Diversity schemes can be used to reduce fading
 antenna heights can be raised to increase reception level
 Space diversity gains great advantage than other diversity methods
 Why space diversity?
 does not use more frequency spectrum than just channel bandwidth
 if two branch diversity is used, each of two received signal strengths is 3dB higher than that of either
polarization or frequency diversity
 Demerits:
 needs a sufficient space separation
 Space separation is determined by the correlation coefficients of two fading signals received by two base
station receiving antennas
 wider the separation, lower will be the correlation coefficients
 i.e. variations of two fading signals will be less alike
ANTENNA ORIENTATION DEPENDENCY

Fig. Antenna orientation at BS

Effective scatterer radius around the mobile unit shown in the fig. is 100λ
The scattered waves reaching the BS antennas come from active scatter region which is formed whenever the
mobile unit is located
 Waves transmitted from a mobile unit miles away, at an angle α, and received by two base station
antennas would propagate through different scatterers in the medium
 the difference in the correlation coefficients of two fading signals depend on the
 separation of two antennas
 direction of the angle
 lower value of correlation coefficient would be obtained from broadside case than from an inline case
at a given antenna separation
 two received fading signals will tend to be same in the inline case
 the fading signals received at the two base station antennas in the inline case come up to the first
antenna from the same propagation path
 only cause in lowering correlation coefficients of these two signals obtained from two base station
antennas is that that signal propagates an additional distance arriving at the second antenna due to the
separation
 ANTENNA HEIGHT / SEPARATION DEPENDENCY

 the antenna separation required is determined by the correlation coefficient data

 correlation coefficients of two fading signals are obtained by experimenting with different antenna heights and
different antenna spacing
 A new parameter η is proposed as,
𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑎 ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 ℎ
 η= =
𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑠𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑑
 Fig.: correlation versus the parameter η for two
antennas in different orientation

 Plot of the experimental correlation coefficients in a suburban area on a new parameter η at 850MHz with
different orientation angles
 for a given value of η the correlation coefficient values are always smaller in the
broadside case(α=0° ) than in any other case.
 highest values of correlation coefficients are in the inline case(α=90° )
 lowering the correlation coefficient ρ lowers the value of η
 experimental correlation coefficients in an urban area w.r.t η would be much lower
than those in suburban area, since there are more scatterers along the path between
mobile and base station in urban area
 the correlation coefficients of two signals received at urban BS antennas have a
tendency to be reduced
 correlation coefficient of up to 0.7 gain a large reduction of signal fading between
two maximal ratio diversity branches
Fig. Performance of two-branch MRC with different
correlation coefficients between branches
 e.g. at a -10dB level wrt RMS value (Fig. Perf. Of MRC), the fading reduction is
from,
9.5% at ρ=1 (No diversity case)
1.3% at ρ=0.7
and then to 0.5% at ρ=0

 This observation encourages us to use ρ=0.7

 Since a great improvement in performance is shown from ρ=1 to ρ=0.7, then a
relatively slight improvement is shown from ρ=0.7 to ρ=0

 ρ=0.7 is chosen for its cost effectiveness in realizing physical antenna spacing

 Given ρ=0.7, then η=11;

 Given ρ=0.125, then η=2 for broad side case
 With a given antenna height of 30m(100ft), but with different values of η, the antenna
spacing can be found.
ℎ 100
 d= = = 9 ft (ρ=0.7)
η 11
ℎ 100
 d= = = 50 ft (ρ=0.125)
η 2

 We get an antenna spacing of 3m(9 ft) for ρ=0.7 and 15m(50 ft) for ρ=0.125.
 Lowering the value of η widens the antenna spacing d

 (From Fig. Perf of MRC) it is found, At h=100 ft ,

 1.3% signal will be below -10dB if antenna spacing is 9 ft
 0.52% of signal will be below -10dB if antenna spacing is 50 ft

 While making an antenna separation from 9 to 50 ft is a big effort, improvement is not

significant. Hence a separation of 9 ft at an antenna height of 100 ft is suggested
 We can find antenna separation for different antenna heights but we maintain same
value of η, η=11
ℎ 150 𝑓𝑡
d= = = 13.6 ft (for h=150 ft)
η 11

ℎ 100 𝑓𝑡
d= = = 9 ft (for h=100 ft)
η 11

 Higher the antenna height, wider will be the separation

 Usually antenna height h is the effective antenna height

 Even though the physical antenna height is 100 ft , the instant effective antenna height can be
taller or shorter than the physical due to the terrain contour between BS and MU in real time

 For actual antenna height of 100 ft, the separation required between two antennas for
broadside case is 9 ft based on η=11
 Since degree of reducing fading by using diversity is based on two effective
antenna heights and their separation, it is found
 If effective antenna height is low, say 50 ft and separation is kept same,
ℎ 50 𝑓𝑡
d= = = 9 ft then η=5.5 which is equivalent to ρ=0.4
η 5.5
 Smaller the ρ, better will be the diversity performance
 When the effective antenna height is lower, the signal reception level drops
 e.g. the drop in reception level for an effective height of 50 ft compared to actual
height is
50
𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑎 ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛 = 20 𝑙𝑜𝑔10 = -6 dB (loss)
100

 In this case the signal drops 6 dB but the diversity advantage increases as ρ
decreases from 0.7 to 0.4
 Else if the effective antenna height increases to 200 ft
 Then
200
𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑎 ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛 = 20 𝑙𝑜𝑔10 = 6 dB (gain)
100

here the value of η becomes

200
η= = 22
9
 Correlation coefficient of η=22 diminishes the diversity improvement
 Hence when the effective antenna height increases, the antenna height gain
increases but so does the correlation coefficient(i.e. diversity advantage is
reduced)
 FREQUENCY DEPENDENCY
 In designing and calculating antenna spacing for space diversity in a mobile radio environment, the same
experimental curves used for frequency of 850MHz can be used to compute the antenna separation for other
frequencies,
850
 𝑑ʹ = 𝑑 , 𝑓 ʹ frequency in MHz
𝑓ʹ

Formula is valid for f>=30 MHz

850
 If 𝑓 ʹ =85 MHz, 𝑑 ʹ = 𝑑
85𝑀

𝑓 ʹ =85 MHz, then the required antenna separation 𝑑 ʹ is 10 times larger than the required antenna separation at
850MHz.
 If d=9 ft, then 𝑑 ʹ =90 ft , which is impractical
 Hence space diversity is not recommended at lower frequencies
 In mobile receiver the antenna spacing required is roughly half a wavelength
ANTENNA CONFIGURATIONS

 Transmitting and receiving antennas will be physically separated to provide additional

isolation , though the transmitting and receiving bands are widely apart
 We look into
 Directional antenna
 Tilting antenna configuration
 Diversity antenna configuration
DIRECTIONAL ANTENNAS

 Besides 1) frequency band isolation

 2) physical space separation
 For reducing signal interference Directional antenna could be used
 In cellular system, sectionized cells are used to reduce CCI
 Each sectionized cell can be formed using three directional antennas at each cell site
 CCI can be reduced by more than one half because strong CCI comes only from back
cells
TILTING ANTENNA CONFIGURATION

An effective way to confine the signal in its

own coverage cell and reduce the
interference in the other co-channel cells is
to tilt a directional antenna beam pattern
downward at a certain angle

Fig. Typical vertical pattern of a directional antenna

  When the beam pattern is tilted downward,
the field strength received by a distant
mobile unit diminishes
 When the vertical beam pattern is tilted to a
certain angle, a notch at the centre of the
horizontal beam pattern is produced
 horizontal beam pattern of the antenna is
shown in the fig.
 The notch becomes larger when the tilt
Fig. Notch effect on the horizontal pattern shown with angle increases
large tilting angles
 The notch can be effectively used to
reduce interference in the co-channel cells

Fig. Reduction of co-channel interference by creating a
notch in the pattern
 The average Signal to interference ratio in
an interfered cell region interfered by a
serving cell site is improved by tilting the
antenna gain pattern downward some
predetermined amount
 A limited loss of antenna gain is accepted
in some parts of the serving cell to achieve
an increase of avg. SIR in the interfered cell
area
 A notch is characterized by a sector of
reduced field intensity as in fig.