Fundamentals of Radio

communications
Radio waves as a transmission medium
Time dependent electromagnetic fields produce waves that radiate
from the source to the environment.
The radio wave based radio communication system is vulnerable to the
environmental factors: mountains, hills reflectors, .
The radio signal depends on the distance from the base station, the
wavelength and the communication environment.
Main problems of radio communication are:
Multipath propagation phenomena
Fading phenomena
Radio resource scarcity
 Multipath propagation
Advantage: connection in case of Non-line-
of-Sight.
Fluctuation in the received signals
characteristics.
The factors affecting radio propagation:
Reflection: collision of the electromagnetic
waves with an obstruction whose
dimensions are very large in comparison
with the wavelength of the radio wave.
Reflected radio waves.
Diffraction, shadowing: collision of the
electromagnetic waves with an obstruction
which is impossible to penetrate.
Scattering: collision of the radio wave with
obstructions whose dimensions are almost
equal to or less than the wavelength of
radio wave.
 Baseband Equivalent Model 1
Communication occurs in passband c , c


f W f + W
2 2
Most of the processing occurs in the baseband
Complex baseband equivalent
2S ( f + fc ) f + fc > 0
Sb ( f ) =
0 f + fc < 0
The baseband equivalent channel is limited to W/2
xb ( t ) = x [ n ] sinc (Wt n )
n

Bandlimited waveform can be expanded in terms of

{
orthogonal basis sinc (Wt n ) }
n
Baseband Equivalent model
 The received signal is described as convolution
of the baseband equivalent model and channel
taps

The sample output can be thought as projection

of the waveform onto waveform

W sinc(W-m)

due to the Doppler spread the bandwidth of the

channel output is slightly larger than the
bandwidth of the input signal.
 Baseband Equivalent Model 2
b m m
Baseband model y ( m ) = a x ( n ) sinc

m n W
W n W
i i
i

y(m) = x(n) aib m sinc m n i m W

n i W W

hl ( m ) = aib m sinc m n i m W
i W W

h (m) l - th channel filter tap at time m.

l

l - s value is a function of channel gains a (t)

paths whos delay (t) are close to l/W.
l - th tap can be interpreted as sample l/W of the low
pass filter baseband channel response convolved
with sinc(W)
 Degrees of freedom 1
Transmitted signal

x(m) is the m - th sample of the signal

W samples per second
each sample represents one complex degree of
freedom
Continuous signal x(t) can be approximated by
W discrete symbols per second
Band limited discrete signal has W degrees of
freedom per second
Continuous time bandlimited complex signal with
duration T has dimension approximately WT
 Degrees of freedom 2
Received signal

The received singnal is also bandlimited

Bandwidth is approximately W
Actual bandwidth is wider since the channel
modulates the transmitted signal
Degrees of freedom of the channel is defined as
the dimension of the received signal space

A good communication scheme exploits all the

available degrees of freedom in the channel
Channel Bandwidth
Impact of wide
bandwidth
The number of taps increases.
New tap amplitude statistics
are needed.
Signal amplitude in the channel
impulssivaste

-70

-80

-90

-100
dB
-110

-120

-130

-140
0 044
0 0
8 0
2 0
6 0
0 0
4 0
8 0
2 0
6 0 0
0 4 0
8 0
2 0
6 0 0
0 4 8 0
0 2 6 0
0 0 402 0 2
8 0 6 0
0 0 0
4 8 0
0 2 6 0
0 0
4 4 5 5 6 6 6 7 7 8 8 8 9 9 1 0
0 1 1 1
0 1 1 2
1 1 1 1 3
2 1 1 4
3 1 4
1 1 5
4 1 1 6
5 1
viive (ns)

Yhteysvlin vaimennus (Path Loss)

-60

-70

)B -80
d
(i -90
d
u
til
p
m
-100
a
-110

-120

-130
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
matka (m)
 Wideband Channel Modelling
The channel can be represented
as a sum of flat fading Rayleigh-
tx rx or Rician components.
Each component has its own
doppler spectrum
Equivalent model is tapped delay
line M 1
h( , t ) = hk e j 2 k t ( k )
fast fading generator
a1s
k =0
noise
source
A1
Geographical area from where
noise
source
90 a2s
fast
fading A2 multipath components arrive to the
receiver can be divided into
generator

elliptical zones.
aNs The with of the zone gives enough
small delay variation of the zone.
fast
AN
fading
generator
The transmission function for a
zone is mostly constant.
 Examples of channel models used in
GSM development
Bad urban
i 1 2 3 4 5 6

/ s
i
0 0.3 1.0 1.6 5.0 6.6

Pim/dB 2.5 0 3.0 5.0 2.0 4.0

class class class class class class

Typical urban
i 1 2 3 4 5 6

/ s
i
0 0.2 0.5 1.6 2.3 5.0

Pim/dB 3.0 0 2.0 6.0 8.0 10.0

class class class class class class

Rural area
tap coefficient

i 1 2 3 4 5 6 distributions

/ s
i
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5

Pim/dB 0 4.0 8.0 12.0 16.0 20.0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 s t

Rice class class class class class

 UMTS user environments

Satellite cells
suburban,
rural macrocells urban, indoor,
microcells picocells
 Radio Channel description
Link budget: to determine the expected signal level at a a given
distance from transmitter.
Covering area, Battery life
Time dispersion: estimation of the different propagation delays related
to the replicas of the transmitted signal which reaches the receiver.

Fading Channel

Large-scale Fading Small-scale Fading

(Rayleigh, Rician)

Path loss Oscillation around

signal mean

Frequency selective Flat Fading Slow Fading Fast Fading

Fading (Short term/multipath)
 Large scale fading
Occurs due to the large obstacles in the environment
Typically frequency independent
More relevant for network planning
Small scale fading
Is described as variation of the signal strength over
distance of the order of the carrier wavelength
Mainly due to the constructive and destructive sum of
the multipath signals
More relevant for designing reliable communication
system
 Large scale fading
Ray tracing model
Model with few parameters

power decay r

simple model
density of obstacles
shadowing depends on the environment
the duration of shadow fades lasts from seconds to minutes
(more slower time than multipath fading)
how much energy each obstacle absorbs
scattering
very large number of individual paths
received waveform modeled as integral over paths (not sum)
 Doppler spread and coherence time

Coherence time describes scale of the

variation of the channel
How fast the taps amplitude h[m] vary as a function
of time
Significant change of the path amplitude occur
over periods of seconds
Significant change in the phase of the i-th path
occurs in T = 1 where D is the Doppler
i
i
4D
shift i
 If different paths contributing to the l -th path have
different Doppler shifts, the tap magnitude changes
significantly
Ds = max (Di D j )
i,j

The change of user speed is inversely proportional to the

largest difference between the Doppler shifts
Coherence time time interval over which the channel
amplitude changes significantly as function of time. (in
an order of magnitude sense)
1
T=
4Ds
c

Typical values are in tens of hundreds of milliseconds

 Delay spread and coherence
bandwidth
delay spread difference in the propagation time
between the shortest and longest paths. (contains only
paths with significant energy)
T = max ( (t ) (t ))
d
i, j
i j

Typical values are in microseconds

UWB 3.1 10.6 GHz few hundred taps.

Frequency coherence shows us how quickly the
channel changes as function of the frequency
Time coherence shows us how quickly channel
changes as function of time
 Coherence bandwidth
Coherence bandwidth Wc=1/(2Td)
Coherence bandwidth is reciprocal to multipath
spread
Flat fading the used bandwidth of is less than
Wc (delay spread is less than symbol time)
Frequency selective fading signal bandwidth is
larger than Wc
Note the frequency selectivity depends not only
on the channel but also on the used signal
bandwidth.
 Delay spread and coherence bandwidth

Doppler spread Ds <-> Coherence time Tc~1/Ds

Doppler spread is proportional to the velocity and the
angular spread of the arriving paths.
Delay spreadTd <-> Coherence bandwidth Wc~1/Td
Delay spread is proportional to the difference between
the lengths of the shortest and the longest paths
Under spread /overspread channel
Delay spread is much less than Coherence time
Types of channel Defining characteristic

Fast fading Tc << delay requirement

Slow fading Tc >> delay requirement

Flat fading W << Wc

Frequency-selective W >> Wc
fading
Underspread Td << Tc
 Example of parameters for the channel

Key channel parameters Representative values

Carrier frequency 1 GHz

Communication bandwidth 1 MHz

Distance between the 1 km

transmitter and receiver
Velocity of the mobile 64 km/h

Doppler shift for a path 50 Hz

Doppler spread of paths 100 Hz

corresponding to a tap
Key channel parameters Representative values
Path amplitude change 1 minute

Path phase change 5 ms

Time to move over a tap 20 s

Coherence time 2.5 ms

Delay spread 1 s

Coherence bandwidth 500 kHz

Error probability in fading channels
The detection error probability decays
exponentially in SNR in the AWGN channel
inversely with the SNR in the fading channel
Error probability behaves like
1/ SNR

P ( h 2 SNR < 1) = exdx

0

1 1
event h <
2
P (deep fade )
SNR SNR
typical error event in the fading channel due to
the channel being in the deep fade
10 0

10 -1

10 -2

R10
E
-3

10 -4

0
0.5
1.0
10 -5
BPSK in AWGN
BPSK in Rayleigh fading
Turbo code 1/3 rate
10 -6

-5 0 5 10 15 20 25
SNR [dB]
 Performance of different schemes
in Rayleigh fading channel
Scheme BER Data rate
high SNR (Bits/s/Hz)
Coherent BPSK 1/(4SNR) 1
Coherent QPSK 1/(2SNR) 2
Coherent 4-PAM 5/(4SNR) 2
Coherent 16-QAM 5/(2SNR) 4
Noncoherent ort.mod. 1/(2SNR) 1/2
Differential BPSK 1/(2SNR) 1
Differential QPSK 1/SNR 2
 Diversity
A good communication scheme exploits all the available
degrees of freedom
The outage in fading channel is determined by the
amplitude of a single signal path
The performance can be improved by passing the information
trough multiple signal paths
Full diversity is achieved if the symbol is repeated over all
possible channel branches.
With L Rayleigh fading branches of diversity
1
P (error ) c
SNR L
at high SNR
 Diversity schemes
Time interleaving the code symbols over
time periods
Space use multiple transmit receive
antennas, use multiple propagation paths
Frequency use wider bandwidth than the
coherence bandwidth of the channel
Polarization use the fact that signals with
different polarization attenuate
independently
Examples of repetition schemes
Repeat the symbol over different coherent
periods
Repeat the same symbol over different
transmit antennas one at a time
Repeat the symbol over frequency sub
carriers in different coherence bands
Transmit a symbol once every delay
spread in a frequency selective channel.
 Repetition schemes
repetition over different coherence periods
repeating over different transmit antennas
repeating over different frequency bands
(OFDM)
transmitting the symbol over every delay
spread in a frequency-selective channel
 Time diversity in GSM
FDD system with 25 MHz bands for uplink
and downlink
Bands are divided into 200 kHz sub-
channels
Each channel is shared by eight users by
using 577 s timeslots
Eight slots form 4.615 ms frames
 Voice is coded into speech 20 ms frames
The frames are coded with convolutional codes
8 time slots are shared between to 20 ms voice
frames
Maximum possible time diversity 8
With mobile speed v
Ds= 2 fcv/c
fc is carrier frequency c is speed of light
Coherence time is
Tc=1/(4Ds)=c/(8fc v)
The channel can be assumed to independent if the coherence time
is less than 5 ms at 900 MHz this corresponds to the speed 30
km/h
 For walking speed 3 km/h
Too little time diversity
Frequency hopping
Typical delay spread 1 s
Coherence bandwidth 500 kHz
By hopping to a channel that is 500 kHz apart
we can assume that the channels fade
independently frequency diversity
 Antenna diversity
In the antennas are placed far apart the channel
between antennas fade independently
The channels independence depends on the
environment and the distance between the antennas
spatial diversity
Receive diversity multiple antennas at the receiver
Transmit diversity multiple antennas at the receiver
Maximum diversity depends on all the paths between the
transmitter and receiver
In order to benefit from the diversity the transmitter
should distribute the copies of the information among the
tx antennaes
 Frequency diversity
The diversity is achieved by resolving multipath at the receiver
Single carrier system
Using equalization at the receiver the ISI can be compensated (to some
extend)
Optimum receiver Maximum Likelihood Sequence Detector (MLSD)
DS spread spectrum
The ISI is low since the symbols are spread with random code
By using RAKE receiver the energy from different paths can be
combined in phase
Complexity much lower than MLSD
Multi carrier system
The transmit coding changes ISI channel into noninterfering sub carriers
Each sub carrier has narrowband flat fading
In order to benefit from diversity the information should be coded over
independently fading frequencies
 Impact of the channel estimation

In RAKE receiver the power of individual

channel taps becomes very small and difficult to
be estimated
Similar problem in time diversity
In Antenna diversity
the received energy per receive antenna is kept
constant the channel measurement is not impacted
when number of receive antennas is increased
In transmit diversity the same power is distributed
among different antennas, that reduces the received
signal power from different paths