MSK Bit Error Rate in Rayleigh Fading

I – In the previous two posts we discussed MSK performance in an AWGN channel, first presenting the MATLAB/OCTAVE Code for one sample per symbol case [Post 1], and then extending it to the more general case of multiple samples per symbol [Post 2]. This helps us visualize the underlying beauty of Continuous Phase Modulation (CPM) which reduces out of band energy and consequently lowers Adjacent Channel Interference (ACI). We also briefly touched upon the case of MSK in Rayleigh fading, but did not go into the details. So here we take a deeper dive.

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Sum of Sinusoids Fading Simulator

We have previously looked at frequency domain fading simulators i.e. simulators that define the Doppler components in the frequency domain and then perform an IDFT to get the time domain signal. These simulators include Smith’s Simulator, Young’s Simulator and our very own Computationally Efficient Rayleigh Fading Simulator. Another technique that has been widely reported in the literature is Sum of Sinusoids Method. As the name suggests this method generates the Doppler components in the time domain and then sums them up to generate the time domain fading envelope. There are three parameters that define the properties of the generated signal. […]

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Uniform, Gaussian and Rayleigh Distribution

It is sometimes important to know the relationship between various distributions. This can be useful if there is a function available for one distribution and it can be used to derive other distributions. In the context of Wireless Communications it is important to know the relationship between the Uniform, Gaussian and Rayleigh distribution. According to Central Limit Theorem the sum of a large number of independent and identically distributed random variables has a Gaussian distribution. This is used to model the amplitude of the in-phase and quadrature components of a wireless signal. Shown below is the model for the received […]

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Fading Model – From Simple to Complex

1. The simplest channel model just scales the input signal by a real number between 0 and 1 e.g. if the signal at the transmitter is s(t) then at the receiver it becomes a*s(t). The effect of channel is multiplicative (the receiver noise on the other hand is additive). 2.   The above channel model ignores the phase shift introduced by the channel. A more realistic channel model is one that scales the input signal as well rotates it by a certain angle e.g. if s(t) is the transmitted signal then the received signal becomes a*exp(jθ)*s(t). 3. In a realistic […]

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M-QAM Bit Error Rate in Rayleigh Fading

We have previously discussed the bit error rate (BER) performance of M-QAM in AWGN. We now discuss the BER performance of M-QAM in Rayleigh fading. The one-tap Rayleigh fading channel is generated from two orthogonal Gaussian random variables with variance of 0.5 each. The complex random channel coefficient so generated has an amplitude which is Rayleigh distributed and a phase which is uniformly distributed. As usual the fading channel introduces a multiplicative effect whereas the AWGN is additive. The function “QAM_fading” has three inputs, ‘n_bits’, ‘M’, ‘EbNodB’ and one output ‘ber’. The inputs are the number of bits to be passed […]

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MIMO Capacity in a Fading Environment

The Shannon Capacity of a channel is the data rate that can be achieved over a given bandwidth (BW) and at a particular signal to noise ratio (SNR) with diminishing bit error rate (BER). This has been discussed in an earlier post for the case of SISO channel and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). For a MIMO fading channel the capacity with channel not known to the transmitter is given as (both sides have been normalized by the bandwidth [1]): Shannon Capacity of a MIMO Channel where NT is the number of transmit antennas, NR is the number of receive […]

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Computationally Efficient Rayleigh Fading Simulator

We had previously presented a method of generating a temporally correlated Rayleigh fading sequence. This was based on Smith’s fading simulator which was based on Clark and Gan’s fading model. We now present a highly efficient method of generating a correlated Rayleigh fading sequence, which has been adapted from Young and Beaulieu’s technique [1]. The architecture of this fading simulator is shown below. This method essentially involves five steps. 1. Generate two Gaussian random sequences of length N each. 2. Multiply these sequences by the square root of Doppler Spectrum S=1.5./(pi*fm*sqrt(1-(f/fm).^2). 3. Add the two sequences in quadrature with each other […]

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A Rayleigh Fading Simulator with Temporal and Spatial Correlation

Just to recap, building an LTE fading simulator with the desired temporal and spatial correlation is a three step procedure. 1. Generate Rayleigh fading sequences using Smith’s method which is based on Clarke and Gan’s fading model. 2. Introduce spatial correlation based upon the spatial correlation matrices defined in 3GPP 36.101. 3. Use these spatially and temporally correlated sequences as the filter taps for the LTE channel models. We have already discussed step 1 and 3 in our previous posts. We now focus on step 2, generating spatially correlated channels coefficients. 3GPP has defined spatial correlation matrices for the Node-B […]

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