‫جامعة الحدباء‬

Computer Engineering Department

Fourth Year
Mobile communication system
2024-2025

Lecture(7)
Small scale fading

1
 Introduction
• Small-scale fading is used to describe the rapid fluctuation of the amplitude of a radio signal
over a short period of time or travel distance.

• Fading is caused by interference between two or more versions of the transmitted signal which
arrive at the receiver at slightly different times.

• Multipath waves consists of a large number of plane waves having randomly distribute
amplitudes, phases, and angles of arrival. that causes the signal to distort or fade.
• Multipath creates small-scale fading effects such as:

 1. Rapid changes in signal strength over a small travel distance or time interval.
 2. Random frequency modulation due to varying Doppler shifts on different multipath
signals.
 3. Time dispersion caused by multipath propagation delays.

2
 Introduction (contd…)
• In mobile radio communications, the emitted electromagnetic waves often do not reach the
receiving antenna directly due to obstacles blocking.
• In fact, the received waves are a superposition of waves coming from all directions due to:
reflection, diffraction, and scattering caused by buildings, trees, and other obstacles. This
effect is known as multipath propagation.
• The received signal is the sum of all the contributions of all the waves following different
trajectories (paths) that include reflections in distant objects and in the objects located in the
proximity of the receiver.

3
 Introduction (contd…)
• As the mobile receiver (i.e. car) moves in the environment, the strength of each multi-path component varies.

Power

Multi-Path
Components

τ0 τ1 τ2 Time

4
Mobile radio channels(contd…)

Power

Multi-Path
Components

τ0 τ1 τ2 Time

5
 Introduction (contd…)
• Different paths signals arrive at the receiver at different times.
 Parameters of Mobile Multipath Channels

• The Factors that can influencing the small scale fading are:
 Multi path propagation
 Speed of the mobile
 Speed of surrounding objects
 The Transmission Bandwidth of the Signal

• The mobile multipath channels parameters are represented by :

 Time dispersion parameters
 Coherence bandwidth
 Doppler spread and Coherence time

• Many of multipath channel parameters are derived from the power delay profile.

7
 Spreading in Frequency
• Spreading in Frequency: motion causes frequency shift (Doppler)

8
 Spreading in Time

• Spreading in Time: different paths have different lengths;

9
 Doppler effect
• Besides the multipath propagation, also the Doppler effect has a negative
influence on the transmission characteristics of the mobile radio channel.

• Doppler effect occurring due to the movement of the mobile unit.

• Doppler effect causes a frequency shift of each of the partial waves.

• The shift in received signal frequency due to motion is called the Doppler shift
It is directly proportional to:
 The velocity of the mobile
 The direction of motion of the mobile with respect to the direction of
arrival of the received wave.

10
 Doppler effect (contd…)

• The angle of arrival 𝛂𝐧 , which is defined by the direction of arrival of the nth incident wave
and the direction of motion of the mobile unit as shown in Figure below, determines the
Doppler frequency (frequency shift) of the nth incident wave according to the relation

𝒇𝒏 = 𝒇𝒎𝒂𝒙 C𝐎𝐒(𝜶𝒏 )
where 𝐟𝐦𝐚𝐱 is the maximum Doppler frequency related
to the speed of the mobile unit v, the speed of light 𝐜𝟎 ,
and the carrier frequency 𝐟𝐜 and is given by the equation:
𝑽
𝒇𝒎𝒂𝒙 = 𝑪𝟎
𝒇𝒄

𝑪𝟎 = 𝒇𝒄 λ
𝑽 𝒇
𝒇𝒎𝒂𝒙 = 𝒇 λ𝒄
𝒄

𝑽
𝒇𝒎𝒂𝒙 = λ

11
 Doppler effect (contd…)
Example

Solution

1 ml = 1.609344 km
60 mph = 96.5 kmph
96500 m / 3600 s = 26.82 m/s
12
 Doppler effect (contd…)
𝒇𝒎𝒂𝒙 = 𝒇 = 𝑽
𝒅 λ
(a) : 𝑰𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒃𝒊𝒍𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒗𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒊𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒕𝒐𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒇 𝒊𝒔 𝒈𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒃𝒚:
f = 𝒇𝒄 + 𝒇𝒅

(b): 𝑰𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒃𝒊𝒍𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒗𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒊𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒂𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒇 𝒊𝒔 𝒈𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒃𝒚:
f = 𝒇𝒄 - 𝒇𝒅

13
 Impulse Response Model of a Multipath Channel
• The impulse response is a useful characterization of the channel, since it may be used to
predict and compare the performance of many different Mobile communication systems and
transmission bandwidths for a Particular mobile channel conditions.

• Mobile radio channel may be modeled as linear filter with time varying impulse response,
consider the case where time variation is strictly due to receiver motion in space.

14
Impulse Response Model of a Multipath Channel(contd…)

The same impulse

response

Different impulse
response

15
Impulse Response Model of a Multipath Channel(contd…)
• The received signal y(t) can be expressed as the convolution of the transmitted signal x(t) with
the channel impulse response.

• Since received signal in a multi path channel consists of series of attenuated , time delayed ,
phase shifted replicas of the transmitted signal, the base band impulse response of multi path
channel can be expressed as

16
Impulse Response Model of a Multipath Channel(contd…)

17
Impulse Response Model of a Multipath Channel(contd…)

Time
-variant
impulse
response

18
Power delay profiles

19
 Power delay profiles(contd…)
• The power delay profiles(PDF) generally represented as plots of relative received power
through a multipath channel as a function of excess delay (τ ) with respect to a fixed time
delay reference.
• Power delay profiles are found by averaging instantaneous power delay profile measurements
over a local area in order to determine an average small-scale power delay profile

• Power delay profiles can be used to derive many multipath channel parameters

Power

Excess delay

20
 Time dispersion parameters
• The time dispersion parameters that can be determined from a power delay profile are:

 Mean excess delay (τ )

 RMS delay spread ( στ ) .
 Excess delay spread

• Mean excess delay, RMS delay spread are multipath channel parameters that can be determined
from a power delay profile.

• The Mean excess delay is the first moment of the power delay profile

• The RMS delay spread is the square root of the second central moment of the power delay
profile

• The maximum excess delay (X dB) of the power delay profile is defined to be the time delay
during which multipath energy falls to X dB below the maximum.This is measured with respect
to a specific power level, which is characterized as the threshold of the signal. When the signal
level is lower than the threshold, it is processed as noise.
21
Power delay Profile(contd…)

22
 Mean excess delay
• The Mean excess delay(𝝉) is the first moment of the power delay profile and is defined to be,

where 𝒂𝒌 and 𝝉𝒌 are the real amplitudes and excess delays.

23
 RMS delay spread
• The RMS delay spread is the square root of the second central moment of the power delay
profile and is defined to be,

     ( ) 2 2

where  kτk
a 2 2
 k k
P(τ )τ 2

2 = k
 k

k
k
a 2
 P(τ
k
k )
• Typical values of rms delay spread are on the order of:
 Microseconds in outdoor mobile radio channel .
 Nanoseconds in indoor radio channels .
24
 Coherence Bandwidth
• While the delay spread is a natural phenomenon caused by reflected and scattered
propagation paths in radio channel, the coherence Bandwidth, BC , is a defined relation
derived from the rms delay spread.

• Coherence bandwidth is a statistical measure of a range of frequencies over which the

channel can be considered “flat” i.e., a channel which passes all spectral components with
approximately equal gain and linear phase.
• I.e., it is the range of frequencies over which two frequency components have a strong
potential for amplitude correlation
• Two sinusoids with frequency separation greater than 𝑩𝒄 are affected quite differently by
the channel

25
 Coherence Bandwidth(contd…)
• Frequency correlation between two sinusoids: 0 <= Cr1, r2 <= 1.

• If the coherence bandwidth is defined as the bandwidth over which the frequency correlation
function is above 0.9, then the coherence bandwidth is approximately,

BC ≈ 1/ 50 στ

• This is called 90% coherence bandwidth.

• If the definition is relaxed so that the frequency correlation function is above 0.5, then the
coherence bandwidth is approximately,

BC ≈ 1/ 5 στ

• This is called 50% coherence bandwidth.

26
 Coherence Time
• Coherence time ,TC , is actually a statistical measure of the time duration over which the
channel impulse response is essentially invariant and quantifies the similarity of the channel
response at different time

• The Doppler spread and Coherence time are inversely proportional to on another, i.e.,

𝟏
TC ≈
𝐟𝐦

where fm is the maximum Doppler shift given by, fm =  / 

27
 Example (Power delay Profile)
Calculate the mean excess delay, rms delay spread for the multipath profile
given in the figure below. Estimate the 50% coherence bandwidth of the channel.
Would this channel be suitable for AMPS or GSM service without the use of an
equalizer.

Solution
The mean excess delay for the given power profile is
given by

𝐀𝐭 𝐭 = 𝟏 𝞵 , 𝒑𝒓 𝝉 = 𝟏𝟎−𝟏 = 0.1
𝟎 𝒙 𝟎.𝟎𝟏+𝟏 𝒙 𝟎.𝟏+𝟐 𝒙 𝟎.𝟏+𝟓 𝒙 𝟏
𝝉= = 4.38 𝝁𝒔
[ 𝟎.𝟎𝟏+𝟎.𝟏+𝟎.𝟏+𝟏 ]
28
 Example(contd…)
The second moment for the given power delay profile can be calculated as

 kτk
a 2 2
 k k
P(τ )τ 2

2 = k
 k

k
k
a 2
 P(τ
k
k )

Therefor the rms spread delay is

     ( ) 2 2

29
 Example(contd…)
The coherent bandwidth is given by

30
 Example (Coherence time)
For f = 30GHz and v = 120 kmph, calculate the coherence time, using table below.

Solution:
𝑽
𝒇𝒅 = 𝐟𝐦𝐚𝐱 =
λ
𝒄
λ=
f
𝟑𝒙𝟏𝟎𝟖
λ= = 0.01m
30 x𝟏𝟎𝟗
(𝟏𝟐𝟎 𝒙 𝟏𝟎𝟑 )/𝟑𝟔𝟎𝟎
𝒇𝒅 = 𝒇𝒎𝒂𝒙 =
0.01
𝒇𝒅 = 𝟑𝟑𝟑𝟑. 𝟑 𝑯𝒛
𝟏
𝑻𝒄 ≈ 𝒇𝒅
𝟏
𝑻𝒄 = = 0.3 s
𝟑𝟑𝟑𝟑.𝟑
31