Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal

FREQUENCY SELECTIVITY PARAMETERS ON

MULTI-CARRIER WIDEBAND WIRELESS SIGNALS
Vctor M Hinostroza, Jos Mireles and Humberto Ochoa Institute
of Engineering and Technology, University of Ciudad Jurez Valle
del tigris # 3247,Ciudad Jurez Chihuahua Mxico C. P. 32306
vhinostr@uacj.mx, jmireles@uacj.mx, hochoa@uacj.mx

ABSTRACT.
This work is a study of the effects of frequency selectivity on multi-carrier wideband signals in three different
environments; indoors, outdoor to indoor and outdoors. The investigation was made using measurements carried
out with a sounder with a 300 MHz bandwidth. The main part of this work is related to evaluate the contribution
of several parameters; frequency selective fading, coherence bandwidth and delay spread on the frequency
selectivity of the channel. A description of the sounder parameters and the sounded environments are given. The
300 MHz bandwidth is divided in segments of 60 kHz to perform the evaluation of frequency selective fading.
Sub channels of 20 MHz for OFDM systems and 5 MHz for WCDMA were evaluated. Figures are provided for
a number of bands, parameters and locations in the three environments. It is also shown the variation of the
signal level due to frequency selective fading. The practical assumptions about the coherence bandwidth and
delay spread are reviewed and a comparison is made with actual measurements. Statistical analysis was
performed over some of the results.
Keywords.
modulation
.

Coherence bandwidth, frequency correlation, frequency selective fading and multi-carrier

I. INTRODUCTION.
To simulate and evaluate the performance of a
wireless mobile system a good channel model is
needed. Mobile communication systems are using
larger bandwidths and higher frequencies and these
characteristics impose new challenges on channel
estimation. The channel models that have been
developed for the mobile systems in use may not be
applicable anymore. To validate that the old
models can be used for future systems or to design
new models, it is necessary to answer the question
about how the same parameters performs at higher
bandwidths? Also, we have to be able to measure
and validate some parameters and compare them to
well known practical assumptions. Measurements
for analysis of the fading statistics at common
frequencies have been performed before, but they
have been performed at small bandwidths, it is
necessary to update the models with higher
bandwidths.
As the data rate (the bandwidth) increases the
communication limitations come from the Inter
Symbol Interference (ISI) due to the dispersive

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characteristics of the wireless communications

channel. The dispersive channel characteristics
arise from the different propagation paths, i.e.
multipath, between the receiver and the transmitter.
This dispersion could be measured, if we could
measure the channel impulse response (CIR). As a
general rule the effects of ISI on the transmission
errors is negligible if the delay spread is
significantly shorter than the duration of the
transmitted symbol. Due to the expected increase in
demand of higher data rates, wideband multicarrier systems such as; OFDM and WCDMA are
expected to be technologies of choice [1], [12] and
[14]. This is because these two technologies can
provide both; high data rates and an acceptable
level of quality of service. However, these systems
need first to address better the problem regarding
channel prediction or estimation, because this
condition is the main boundary for higher data
rates. The study of correlation of the mobile radio
channel in frequency and time domains has helped
to understand the problem of channel estimation.
One of this work objectives is to evaluate
frequency selective fading (FSF) in several
environments. This work begins with the results of

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measurements made with a sounder that uses the
chirp technique for sounding.

Multipath fading channels are usually classified

into flat fading and frequency selective fading
according to their coherence bandwidth relative to
the one of the transmitted signal. Coherence
bandwidth is defined as the range of frequencies
over which two frequency components remain in a
strong amplitude correlation. Physically, it defines
the range of frequencies over which the channel
can be considered flat. The analytic issue of
coherence bandwidth was first studied by Jakes [1]
where by assuming homogeneous scattering, his
work revealed that the coherence bandwidth of a
wireless channel is inversely proportional to its
root-mean-square (rms) delay spread. The same
issue was subsequently studied by various authors
[4], [8], [9], [10]. Since many practical channel
environments can significantly deviate from the
homogeneous assumption, various measurements
were conducted to determine multipath delay
profiles and coherence bandwidths [19], [20], [21],
[22], aiming to obtain a more general formula for
coherence bandwidth. In this work the variations of
this formula are reviewed and compared with
actual results and a comparison is provided.
The rest of this document is structured as follow; in
part II the theoretical foundations of the channel
impulse response frequency selective fading and

E{H (t1 ; f1 ) * H (t2 ; f 2 )} =

2f1 1

E{h(t ; ) * h(t ; )}e

1

II. MATHEMATICAL BACKGROUND

2.1 The wideband channel model.
The radio propagation channel is normally
represented in terms of a time-varying linear filter,
with complex low-pass impulse response, h(t, ). Its
time-varying low-pass transfer function is [4] [6]
[8] [10]:

H (t, f ) = h(t; )e j 2f d

(1)
Where represents delay, using (1) the frequency
correlation function for the channel can be written
as:

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2 2

(2)
By considering the channel to have uncorrelated
scattering (US) and to be wide sense stationary
(WSS), the subscript for is eliminated and f1 and
f2 can be replaced by f + f and t1 and t2 replaced
by t + t, then:

R H ( t; f ) Rh ( t; )e j 2 f d
=

(3)
In (3) RH and Rh represents the correlation of
random variations in the channels transfer function
and its impulse response respectively. If there are
US, then t is 0 then:

Rh (0; ) = E h(0; )

}= E {h( ) }
2

(4)
substituting into (3) gives:

R H ( f ) E h( ) e j 2 f d
=

(5)

coherence bandwidth are reviewed. Also in this

part, the characteristics of the three environments
sounded are described. In part III, the frequency
selective fading evaluation and analysis are
presented. Plots of the dependency of fading deep
and frequency separation of two specific points in
the response are studied. At part IV, data about the
relationship between delay spread and coherence
bandwidth are provided. At the end in part V,
conclusions and future work are mentioned.

e + j 2f d d
1
2

E h( )

where
is the average Power Delay
Profile PDP of the channel. So, under the above
conditions, RH is the Fourier transform of the
average PDP.
2.2 Coherence bandwidth.
The multipath effect of the channel, the arrival of
different signals in different time delays causes the
statistical properties of two signals of different
frequencies to become independent if the frequency
separation is large enough. The maximum
frequency separation for which the signals are still
strongly correlated is called coherence bandwidth
(Bc). Besides to contribute to the understanding of
the channel, the coherence bandwidth is useful in
evaluating the performance and limitations of
different modulations and diversity models.
The coherence bandwidth of a fading channel is
probed by sending two sinusoids, separated in
frequency by f = f1- f2 Hz, through the channel.
The coherence bandwidth is defined as f, over
which the cross correlation coefficient between r1
and r2 is greater than a preset threshold, say, 0=
0.9. Namely:

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C r1,r 2 =

= 0

Cov(r1, r2)

(6)var(r1) var(r2)
Then, using (2)

R(s, ) = r1r2 =

r1r2 p(r1, r2)dr dr

1

p(r1, r2) =

2 2

p(r1, r2, ,
1

It is possible to see in this expression that the

correlation decreases with frequency separation.
This formula has been substituted by several
practical expressions some of them are the
following [4], [8], [9], [10].

)d1d 2

(8)

r1r2
(1 2
2

exp

r + r r1r2
I0

2 (1 2 ) 1 2
2
1

1 1
R(s, ) = b0 F ( , ;1; 2 )
2
2 2
this may also be expressed as

2
R(s, ) = b0 1 +
2
4

(10)

R( s, ) r1 r2
2

r1

][ r

2
2

R(s, ) = b0 (1 + )E

1+

r2

BC =0.9

(13) BC =0.5 =

5 rms
50 rms
1
1
(16)
(15) BC =
=
8 mean
2 rms
(14)

In general

BC =

rms

(17)

It will be shown, comparing with practical

measurements that none of these expressions are
accurate and it is difficult to obtain a
comprehensive expression for all environments.

(9)

[r

B C =0.9 =

2
2

Where I0(x) is the modified Bessel function of zero

order. Then, substituting (8) in (7) and integrating

( s, ) =

(12)

2
(1 + )E

1
+

2
(s, ) =

2
2
2
J ( )
= 2 = 0 2m 2
1+ s

(7)
Where p(r1,r2) is

]
(11)

Where E(x) is the complete elliptic integral of the

second kind. The expansion of the hyper geometric
function gives a good approximation to (9). After
several reductions and considerations, the
correlation coefficient becomes

2.3 Sounder systems

environment description.

characteristics

and

The sounder system used to make the

measurements of this work was developed at
UMIST in Manchester UK and is described in [2]
and [3]. This sounder uses the FMCW or chirp
technique. The generated chirp consists of a
linearly frequency modulated signal with a
bandwidth of 300 MHz and a carrier frequency of
2.35 GHz. The chirp repetition frequency is 100
Hertz, which allows having 50-Hertz Doppler
range measurements. The receiver has the same
architecture than the transmitter. But in the
receiver, the generated chirp is not transmitted but
mixed with the incoming signal from the antenna,
which are the multi-path components of the
transmitted chirp. This mixing allows having the
multi-path components at low frequencies, these
low frequencies can be sampled, digitized and
stored in a computer to perform the required
analysis.
The three environments where the measurements
took place were the following: 1) Indoors, in

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different floors around a building in an eight stories
building. Each floor form a rectangle with four
long corridors; two 66 m long and two 86 m long,
the width of the corridors is 3 m, the total covered
area was 912 square meters and the ceiling height
is 5 meters. The transmitter was static and the
receiver was moved around the corridors and in
different floors, measurements were taken at
specific distances in each corridor. 2) From a
building to different building. These two buildings
are eight stories high, they have about the same
high and they are separated by about 200 meters.
The transmitter was located in the top of one of the
buildings and the receiver was moved around
specific locations inside the second building in all
eight different floors. 3) An urban environment
around the city center, a commercial area with
several high rising buildings. Each location in each
environment was sampled during one second and
100 impulse responses were stored for this specific
location. When the measurements were taken,
every location was sampled with 100 impulse
responses, an impulse response (IR) was taken on
that specific location every 10 milliseconds.
III. FREQUENCY SELECTIVITY
PARAMETERS
To carry out the calculation of frequency selective
fading, each processed IR was split in samples of
60 kHz, which was the minimum sampled
frequency, each 300 MHz bandwidth was sampled
5000 times every 10 milliseconds, this means that a
sample was taken every 2 microseconds or every
60 kHz. Each IR was averaged over the complete
second, meaning that every frequency was
averaged 100 times for each IR. The level of the
frequency response of each 60 kHz segment was
calculated and recorded
In each environment the channel transfer function
for about 50 different locations were calculated and
recorded. Each transfer function has 5000 sampled
frequencies, i.e. 5000 segments for each location.
Every sample represents the signal level on that
segment, relative to the maximum over the
complete 300 MHz bandwidth. The outdoors
environment has a bandwidth of 120 MHz, the
indoors and indoor to outdoor environments has
300 MHz bandwidth.
The fading characteristics in each of the
environments were calculated. For each of the
locations the fading characteristics that were
calculated were; average delay spread, RMS delay
spread, coherence bandwidth, channel transfer
function and frequency correlation.
Using the
channel transfer function for each IR, specific
fading characteristics for sub channels of 5 and 20

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MHz were calculated. Figure 1 shows a typical

channel transfer function. In figure 2 are shown the
fading characteristics for a 20 MHz sub channel, in
this figure there are 15 different lines, each one
corresponds to a 20 MHz sub channel in a 300
MHz bandwidth. To get this figure, the following
has been done; first, the fading information of the
complete 300 MHz bandwidth was divided in 15
segments of 20 MHz each. Then, each point on that
segment, that represents a 60 kHz sample, was
measured and the result was compared to the next
sample, then the next sample was compared and so
on up to the complete 20 MHz bandwidth was
compared. After that, a second 20 MHz sub
channel was applied the same procedure and so on
up to the end of the 300 MHz bandwidth. To form
figure 3, the same procedure was followed, but in
this case the sub channel bandwidth was of 5 MHz,
then this figure has 60 different lines which come
from the 300 MHz total bandwidth.
Figure 2 shows that the maximum fading deep
within the 20 MHz sub channel is lower than 14 dB
in all the bandwidth. On the other hand, in the 5
MHz bandwidth the maximum fading deep was of
18 dB. It is possible to see in figure 2, that most of
the lines follows a pattern, which means that the
fading in all sub channels is about the same. In
figure 2, most of the lines stay below 5 dB and only
a few lines go higher than 6 dB; this could mean
that deep fading in this bandwidth is rare.

Figure 1. Typical channel transfer function.

Figure 3 shows the calculations of fading
characteristics for the second environment with 15
different 20 MHz sub channels, this figure shows
that there are more dispersion of the lines, which
means there are more deep fading in the responses
of the IR. Since this environment is the
measurement of the propagation for the penetration
of the signal in different floors in a building, higher
delay spread, (time dispersion) than the former
environment was expected and therefore more
fading.

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Another way to look at the statistics of the fading is
to calculate the CDF of this parameter. To make
the calculations of these CDFs figures, the mean
of all locations in the involved environment were
used. Figure 4 shows the CDF of the building-tobuilding environment for both, the 20 and 5 MHz
bandwidths, this figure shows that the fading deep
for a 20 MHz sub channel is below 7 dB for 90%
of the time. On the other hand, for the 5 MHz sub
channel, the fades are below 5 dB for 90% of the
time.

Figure 2 Indoor to outdoor fading Characteristics

for a 20 MHz sub channel

correlation coefficient, the coherence bandwidth

(Bc) is lower than 10 MHz most of the locations.
This is corroborated in figure 6, this figure shows
the average Bc for all locations in the indoors
environment.
Figure 7, shows the RMS delay
spread for all locations for the same environment.
Quick calculations comparing figure 11 results and
expression (13) show that, few calculated values of
the versions of expression (13) match with the
measured values of figure 7.

Figure 4. Fading CDF for indoor to outdoor

for a 5 MHz sub channel

Figure 3. Outdoor to indoor fading Characteristics

For a 5 MHz sub channel
Figure 5. Coherence bandwidth for indoors
IV. COHERENCE BANDWIDTH
EVALUATION.
Figure 5 shows the frequency correlation of all
locations in the indoors environment. To make this
figure the following was done; first the PDP of all
locations was calculated. Then a Fourier transform
was performed on the PDP, which gave us the
frequency correlation for all locations. Then the
frequency correlation for each location was plotted
in figure 5. On this figure, the thick and dashed line
is the line for the maximum coherence bandwidth,
when the transmitter and receiver are connected
directly. In figure 5, one can see that at 0.9

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Figure 6. Average of coherence bandwidth for

indoors
Figure 8 shows the frequency correlation for the
outdoor to indoor environment, this figure shows
that in this environment the Bc at frequency
correlation of 0.9 is higher than the indoor
environment, although the delay spread is not
different is both environments. Figure 9, shows the
average Bc for the outdoors to indoors
environment, one can see in this figure, that the
coherence bandwidth is higher than the indoor
environment, which was an expected result, but the
difference is higher than expected. In indoors the
coherence bandwidth is not bigger than 20 MHz in
average. In the other hand, in the outdoor to indoor,
the average is about 100 MHz, here is relation of 5
to 1. The difference in RMS delay spread is 100 nS
versus 200 nS, there is a relation of 2 to 1.

Figure 8. Coherence bandwidth for outdoor to

indoor

Figure 9. Average of coherence bandwidth for

indoor to outdoor
Figure 7. RMS delay spread for indoors
Figure 11 shows the frequency correlation for the
outdoors environment. Figure 12, shows the Bc at
frequency correlation of 0.9. In this case the Bc can
not be compared to the Bc for the other two
environments, since in this environment a lower
bandwidth is evaluated, 120 MHz instead of 300
MHz.
Despite this difference and observing
figures 11 and 12, Bc is not significantly lower
even when we have higher distances and higher
delay spread. In outdoors the Bc is not bigger than 2
MHz in average. In the other hand, the RMS delay
spread is 1.5 S in average.

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Table 1, shows the comparisons of Bc for the

three environments with the different versions of
expressions 13 -16 and measured results.
This
table shows that the values of the expressions are
always lower than the measured results, which
induce to conclude that the expressions were
underestimated, at least in these environments.
Moreover, it is possible to conclude that these
expressions were deduced with not enough
measured results. Also, table 1 show that the
relationship between delay spread and coherence
bandwidth, not necessarily is a single constant.

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Figure 11. Coherence bandwidth for outdoors

Figure 10. RMS delay spread for outdoors to

indoors
V. CONCLUSIONS.
In this work the results of analysis of frequency
selective fading on two indoor and one outdoor
environment have been presented. The three
environments analyzed demonstrate that the fading
is within specific limits, these results could help to
the designers of adaptive receivers to estimate the
channel more accurately. The division of the
channel impulse bandwidth in segments of 20 and
5 MHz bandwidths, allow the calculation of fading
in the bandwidth of interest for OFDM and
WCDMA transmission. Plots of the frequency
selective fading will help for this assessment. The
analysis of coherence bandwidth show that the
expressions accepted in the literature for its
calculation are not accurate and the accepted direct
relationship between delay spread and coherence
bandwidth is not simple. Also, additional work is
require on try to
determine how much the
combined effect of Doppler spread, time variability
and frequency offsets affects the transmission on
multi-carrier signals as the ones on OFDM y
CDMA

Figure 12. Average of coherence bandwidth for

outdoors

Table 1. Coherence bandwidth calculations

Value from
Indoors
Outdoors
Outdoors
to indoors
(13)
400 kHz 200 kHz
30 kHz
(14)
4 MHz
2 MHz
300 kHz
(15)
3.3 MHz 2.5 MHz
250 kHz
(16)
3.2 MHz 1.6 MHz
212 kHz
Measured0.9
5.3 MHz 12 MHz
300 kHz
Measured0.5
19 MHz 72 MHz
5.6 MHz

Figure 13. RMS delay spread for outdoors

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Jakes W. C., Microwave mobile

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