DOPPLER SPREAD ESTIMATION IN MOBILE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Young-Chai KO Gibong Jeong
Wireless Center
Texas Instruments Inc.
San Diego, CA 92121, USA.
Email: <ykoQti .com>
ABSTRACT
A new technique based on the auto-correlation function
is described for the estimation of the Doppler spread
in mobile communication systems. We first propose to
divide a uncertainty region of Doppler spread into mul-
tiple frequency bins. Based on the given multiple bins
the correlator compares the estimated value at a cer-
tain time index to the theoretical exact value and then
decides which bin the Doppler spread is estimated in.
The certain time index can be optimized to give the
largest decision region among multiple bins. We derive
the optimum time index algorithm to give the largest
decision region for each bin based on Rayleigh fading
channel. We also apply the same Doppler spread esti-
mator to the Rician case with the slight transformation
of the received signal. We show that the proposed tech-
nique is not affected significantly by the Rician factor
and the SNR degradation with the reasonable number
of samples for estimation which is not the case of other
estimators given in the literature.
1. INTRODUCTION
The signal received by a mobile receiver varies over
time and space because of interference between one or
more versions of transmitted signal which arrive at the
receiver at slightly different times. These waves, called
multipath, combine at the receiver antenna and vary in
amplitude and phase over time. The Doppler spread,
fd, which is related to the wavelength of the transmit-
ted signal, A, and the vehicle speed, v, as fd = v/A [l],
determines how fast the signal varies or fades. Since
the performance of many receiver techniques depends.
on the fading rate of the received signal, an adaptive
communication receiver can improve the performance
and reduce the complexity by using the Doppler infor-
mation to control receiver parameters, such as pilot fil-
ter bandwidth, automatic gain control loop bandwidth,
phase tracker bandwidth and interleaver size [2]. The
Doppler information is also used to aid hand-off process
in cellular communication systems [3, 41.
0-7803-7484-3/02/$17.00 02002 IEEE.
Wireless Center
Texas Instruments Inc.
San Diego, CA 92121, USA.
Email: <gjeong@ti. com>
Numerous techniques have been proposed .and used
to estimate the Doppler spread and velocity. Most
of the prior techniques can be categorized into two
classes: the techniques based on the level crossing rate
(LCR) [l, 51 and the ones based on the covariance of
the channel estimates [5, 61. The performance of the
estimators based on these two schemes has been ex-
tensively studied and shown in 14, 5, 6, 71. All of the
above techniques have proven to be efficient and also ro-
bust to various of the propagation environment. How-
ever, both methods require a high signal-tenoise ratio
(SNR) for reliable estimation that is not adequate for
mobile communication system.
In this paper, we propose a new Doppler spread es-
timator, named as correlation based approach which
is robust to additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN),
i.e., works well for low SNR, regardless of the variation
of channel environment. First, we propose to divide a
uncertainty region of Doppler spread into multiple fre-
quency bins. This is motivated by the fact that most
receiver algorithms do not need high accuracy of the
Doppler spread estimation but requires knowledge if a
mobile is in fast (F-mode), medium (M-mode) or slow
mode (S-mode). In Table 1 three bin division is shown
where we restrict the maximum value of the Doppler
spread for a practical consideration to 500 Hz corre-
sponding to the vehicle speed u = 270 Km/Hr for the
carrier frequency f,=2 GHz and assume that there is
no case faster than this maximum value. Based on
three bin division as shown in Table 1, our proposed
Doppler spread estimator compares the estimated cor-
relation value with the theoretical value of the correla-
tion function at the optimum delay time which maxi-
mizes the decision region among the F-mode, M-mode
and S-mode.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
Section I1 presents the signal model under considera-
tion. In Section 111, the new Doppler spread estimator
is derived over the Rayleigh and Rician fading chan-
nels. Finally, the numerical results and the conclusions
are summarized in Section IV.
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Table 1: Three bin division for Doppler spread estimation.
2. SIGNAL AND NOISE MODELS
We assume that the received complex baseband signal,
r ( t ) , at the discrete time t = kT,, corrupted by AWGN
has the following form
r(k) = z(k)+n(k) = (z(k)+ni(k))+j(y(t)+n,(t)) (1)
where the received signal z ( k ) is the resulting super-
position of all multipath components at the output
of the receiver antenna, z(k) and y(k) are in-phase
and quadrature components of z ( k ) , In (l), n ( k ) =
ni(k)+jn,(k),is complex AWGN with two-sided power
spectral density, E[n?(k)]= E[ni(k)]= N0/2, where
E[.] is the average operation. Denoting E [ z 2 ( k ) ]=
E[y2(k)]= E[z2(k)]/2 = Q/2 the average SNR of the
received signal can be written as
3. DOPPLER SPREAD ESTIMATION
3.1. Rayleigh Fading Channels
The Rayleigh distribution is frequently used to model
multipath fading with no direct lineof-sight (LOS) path.
In this case the z(t)and y ( t ) in (1) are zero-mean Gaus-
sian with variance a2 = 012 and the auto-correlation
function has the form [l]
fl
CZZ(~) +
= E [ z ( k ) Z ( k T ) ] = yJO(2"fdT)
).( = '22 (') 7 (3)
where .lo(.) is the Bessel function of the fist kind. Con-
sidering the noise component in (l), the auto-correlation
of the in-phase component can be shown, assuming that
ni(lc)and n,(k) are independent of z ( k ) and y(k), to
be given by
(4) mode. Using the same value as a time index nl = 18 we
+ +
where ri(k) = z ( k ) ni(k),r,(k) = y(k) n,(k), and
6(.) is the impulse function. For bandlimited noise,
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Figure 1: Implementation of correlator in which the
auto-correlationvalue at a certain time index nj is nor-
malized to the energy of the signal, where N denotes
the number of samples to be used for the estimation of
Doppler spread.
the &function in (4) is replaced to sinc (= sin(z)/z)
function with a certain noise bandwidth. Note from (4)
that the additive noise does not take effect on the shape
of the auto-correlation function except at T = 0. We
denote the time delay T in discrete version as T = njTs
with sampling time T,and an integer nj.
Now we want to estimate the Doppler spread as
one of three bins, S-mode, M-mode and F-mode as in
Table 1 by seeing the correlation value at a certain
time indexes nj. Let us denote n1 as the time index
which decides if the Doppler spread is in M/Smode or
F-mode. This value of n1 can be chosen to be integer
value satisfying the following condition
. T,) = Max[Jo(t)]+Min[Jo(t)1
J o ( 2 ~250.7~1
.
= -= 0.2986 for real 2
value t , (5)
where we set the sampling frequency T,=1/15000see
ond, and it is found to be given by nl=l8. Note
in (5) that the correlation function is monotonically
decreasing over fd E [0,500] Hz and has the middle
point of the maximum and minimum value of Jo(t)
for real value t at nl=18 by which the false proba-
bility of the S(F)-mode can be minimized and the deci-
sion region between M-mode and F-mode can be max-
imized. Given nl=l8, the theoretical correlation value
for fd = 250 Hz, is calculated from (3) as Jo(2x .250.
18. T,)= 0.2906. Letting the threshold Ti1') = 0.2906
the Doppler spread can be estimated as the MIS mode
if the correlator p(n1) is larger than Til8), otherwise
it is estimated as F-mode, where the correlator p ( n j )
can be implemented as shown in Fig. 1. We note from
Fig. 1 that the p ( n j ) is the normalized function of the
autecovariance function to the average signal power in
(4) and hence the maximum value of p ( n j ) is set to 1.
Once M/Smode or F-mode is decided, the next step
is to decide if the Doppler spread is in Smode or M-
have the threshold Ti1') = Jo(27r 60.18. T,)= 0.9495.
Based on the thresholds Til8) and Ti") the Doppler
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spread can be estimated as the rule of

If p(nl = 18) > Tr8), declareM/S - mode

TP),
[ If p(n1 = 18) >
Else declare M-Mode
Else declare F-Mode.
declares - mode

In (6) the estimation region between S-mode and M-

(6)

mode is relatively very small to the one between S/M-

mode and F-mode which might result in the false alarm
probability of the S(M)-mode to be estimated as M(S)-
mode to be higher than the probability of the M(F)-
mode to be estimated F(M)-mode. Adopting another
time index 122 which can be chosen in a similar manner
as nl in (5)t o satisfy
we have 122 = 50. Using two thresholds we decrease
the false alarm probability to estimated the S-mode as
M-mode. Denoting the threshold Tis0) = Jo(2n.60.50.
T,)= 0.6453, the algorithm in (6)for the estimation of
the Doppler spread can be modified as
If p(n1 = 18) > T Y ) , declareM/S - mode
Figure 2: Application of Doppler spread estimator de-
rived from Rayleigh fading channel to Rician fading
environment.
spread estimation algorithm described in Rayleigh fad-
ing case cannot be applied due to the different shape of
the auto-correlationfunction between (3) and (9). Be-
sides the effect of AOA we now seek a way to avoid the
effect of Rician factor K on the estimation of Doppler
spread using the same algorithm in (8) as Rayleigh fad-
ing case. For this purpose we make the received signal
DC free, Le., E[z(t)]= E[y(t)]= 0 by eliminating
the mean value of the in-phase or quadrature compo-
nent. The schematic diagram is shown in Fig. 2 in
which the estimator employs the DC removal block,

i
transforms the Rician fading received signal to the sig-
If p(n2 = 50) > T Y ) , declares - mode nal having the property the same as Rayleigh fading
Else declareM - Mode signal, and apply the same algorithm to estimate the
Else declareF - Mode. Doppler spread. Eliminating the specular component
by making the signal DC free causes the SNR given in
(8)
We clearly see from Fig. 3 that using two thresholds (2) to decrease and might result in the degradation of
can give more decision region between S-mode and M- the performance of Doppler spread. However it is no-
mode. table that if SNR degradation is not from the increase
of the noise variance but from the reduction of the sig-
nal itself, the correlator which is normalized version of
3.2. Rician fading channel
the auto-correlationfunction operates regardless of the
For a multipath fading channel containing a LOS com- SNR change.
ponent, z(t) and y ( t ) in (1) have non-zero mean. De-
noting s as the LOS component and the variance of z(t) 4. SIMULATION RESULTS
and g ( t ) as 02, the autcxovariance function is given
by PI In this section some simulation results using the pro-
posed Doppler spread estimator are illustrated. As a
1 R
c z z ( T ) = --
K+12
JO(2TfdT) + C O S ( ~ Tfd7cosOoperformance measurement, we define the conditional
probability given the Doppler spread as the probability
K O (970 be estimated as S, M or F-mode given the Doppler
CZY(T)= -- ~ cos eo),
s i n ( 2fd
K+12 spread fd, P[S or M or FI fd]. The assumption for this
are made as followiWZ:
where the Rician factor, K, is defined as the ratio of
the power in the LOS component and scattered com-
ponent, i.e., K = s2/(202),
sampling frequency fs = kZl5KHz,
. . . 80 is the angle of arrival
(AOA) of the LOS component, and the average power 2. carrier frequency fc=2 GHz,
+
is O = s2 202. The auto-correlation function of the
received signal in (9) is in more complicated form in- 3. isotropic scattering, i.e, there is no AOA effect on
volved with AOA and K. In this case the Doppler ' the Doppler spread estimation,

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 4. Rayleigh and Rician fading channel is generated
based on the technique presented in [8],
5. Doppler spread does not exceed 500 Hz.
4.1. Effect of AWGN
Figs. 4-5 show and compare the performance of the
Doppler spread estimator using a single correlator in
(6) and two correlators in (8) with SNR y=10 dB and
20 dB, respectively. We can clearly see from these re-
sults that the performance of Doppler estimator using
two correlators outperforms the case of a single corre-
lator particularly in the low value of Doppler spread, as
expected. Using the LCR of the envelope and covari-
ance based Doppler estimators presented in [l]the ad-
ditional simulation results not illustrated in this paper
show that P[SI fd]=O, P[SI fd]=O, and P[SI fd]=l over
most range of Doppler spread for the SNR below 20
dB. We also find that there is no much degradation of
the performance due to the decrease of SNR. Note also
that the correct probability to detect the small value
of the Doppler spread is a bit lower than the case of
high speed. It can be interpreted from (4) that AWGN
takes the effect on the correlation function near time
offset value at 7 = 0 for a k e d Doppler spread or the
small value of the Doppler spread for a fixed time offset
value.
4.2. Effect of Rician Factor K [3] M. D. Austin and G . L.
Figs. 6-7 present the effect of two different value of
Rician factor K = l and K=10, using a single and two
correlator for y=20 dB. Changing the Rician random
variables (RVs) to Rayleigh RVs by eliminating the
specular component as shown in Fig. 2 the proposed
estimator can indeed avoid the effect of Rician factor
K. In this simulation the noise variance remains the
same but the signal variance changes for SNR ,y,to be
k e d at 20 dB As mentioned in 3.2, there is no per-
formance degradation due to the DC free operation as
long as noise variance does not change.
4.3. Effect of Number of Samples
Figs. 8-9 show the effect of number of samples on the
performance of Doppler spread estimator. We simu-
lated using various number of samples, N=50, 100,
200,300,500, and 1000. We see from these figures that
the performance of Doppler spread estimator is more
dependent on the number of samples than any other
parameters such as Rician factor, K, and SNR. Using
the. number of samples more than N=300 we have the
performance better than 0.9 correct probability over
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Figure 3: Auto-correlation function at the time indexes
n = 18 and = 50. The threshold T$l5)=O.2906 is set
for the decision between MIS-mode and F-mode and
T2(l5)=O.9495 and Ti1’) =0.6453 are used for the de-
cision between S-mode and M-mode, for the Doppler
estimator with a single correlator and two correlators,
respectively.
most of Doppler spread region except the boundary of
the bin transition.
REFERENCES
[l] G. L. Stiiber, Principles of Mobile Communications.
Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.
[2] A. Chockalingam, P. Dietrich, L. B. Milstein, and R. R.
Rao, “Performanceof closed-loop power control in DS-
CDMA cellular systems,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol.,
V O ~ .47-3, pp. 774-789, August 1998.
Stuber, “Velocity adaptive
handoff algorithm for microcelluax systems,” IEEE
Pans. Veh. Technol., vol. 43, pp. 781-785, March 1994.
[4] J. M. Holtzman and A. Sampath, “Adaptive averag-
ing methodology for handoffs in cellular systems,” IEEE
’prans. Veh. Technol., vol. VT-44, pp. 59-66, February
1995.
[5] C. Tipedelenlioglu, A. Abdi, G. B. Giannakis, and
M. Kaveh, “Estimation of Doppler spread and signal
strength in mobile communicationswith applications to
handoff and adpative transmission,” Wirel. Commun.
Mob. Comput., pp. 221-242, August 2001.
[6] A. Sampath and J. Holtzman, “Estimationof maximum
doppler frequency for handoff decisions,” in Proc. IEEE
Veh. Technol. Con& VTC’93, Secaucus, NJ, pp. 859-
862, May 1993.
[7] A. Abdi and M. Kaveh, “A new velocity estimator for
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[8] D. J. Young and N. C. Beauliu, “The generation of
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VTC 2002
Figure 4: The performance comparison of Doppler
spread estimators using two correlators and a single
correlator for SNR y = 10 dB with the number of sam-
ples N=200 versus the Doppler spread over Rayleigh
fading channel.
Figure 5: The performance comparison of Doppler
spread estimators using two correlators and a single
correlator for SNR y = 20 dB with the number of sam-
ples N=200 versus the Doppler spread over Rayleigh
fading channel.
Figure 6: The performance comparison of Doppler
spread estimator using two correlators for SNR y = 10
dB with the number of samples N=200 versus the
Doppler spread over Rician fading channel with Rician
factor K=l and 10, respectively.
0-7803-7484-3/02/$17.00 02002 IEEE.
Figure 7: The performance comparison of Doppler
spread estimator using a single correlator for SNR
y = 10 dB with the number of samples N=200 ver-
sus the Doppler spread over Rician fading channel with
Rician factor K=l and 10, respectively.
Figure 8: The performance comparison of Doppler
spread estimators using two correlators for SNR y = 10
dB over Rayleigh fading channel for various number of
samples, N=50, 100, 200, 300,500, 1000.
Figure 9: The performance comparison of Doppler
spread estimators using a single correlator for SNR
y = 10 dB over Rayleigh fading channel for various
number of samples, N=50, 100, 200, 300, 500, 1000.
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