LAB 5

Introduction to Fading Channel

ECE 4202 Communication

ENGineering LAB IV
 Quiz in Group
Switch-off the LCD monitor in front of you 
Write your name, group name and matric #  
Each question has 10 marks   

Q1:
Q2:
Q3:
 Learning Outcomes
3

After completion of this course the students will be able to:

ECE4202 Communication Engineering Lab IV

 Lab Schedule
4

Week Topics
1 Introduction to Computer Simulation and MATLAB
2 Monte Carlo Simulations of Communication Systems
3 –Simulation
AWGN Channel
of MPSK
4 Simulation of MQAM
5 Simulation of Multipath Fading Channel
6 Performance Evaluation of Physical /Link Layer
7-11 Mini Project
12-13 Evaluation and Assessment
14 Lab Test
ECE4202 Communication Engineering Lab IV
 Agenda
5

Introduction to fading channel

Types of fading
Generation and statistics of fading samples
Channel Estimation
Link level simulation in fading channel
LAB Assignment+Quiz

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Radio Propagation
6

Radio propagation is classified into

 Large-scale propagation (path loss)
 Small-scale propagation (fading)

Large-scale propagation
 Behavior of radio waves over ‘long’ distance (several
tens to hundreds of meters)
Small-scale propagation
 Behavior of radio waves over ‘short’ distance (5 to 40
wavelengths)
 THIS LAB IS ABOUT SMALL-SCALE FADING

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Introduction to Fading Channel
7

Fading is the time variation of received signal as

observed by a receiver antenna
 Multiple paths exist between the transmitter and receiver.
Relative delay differences between paths can’t be resolved
 Movement of mobile terminal. Received signals have random
phases.
 Random superposition creates largely fluctuating resultant
vector

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Radio wave propagation
8 scenario
LARGE SCALE
reflection
refr
a ctio
n
Mobile/static
LLooSS

sc
at
te r
in
g

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Cont’d
9

SMALL SCALE

Non-resolvable;
Seen as a single path by receiver

Each of the wave has random phase and amplitude.

All are randomly superpositioned. scatterers

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Random superposition
10
>>wave1=rand(1,100)+j*rand(1,100);
>>wave2=rand(1,100)+j*rand(1,100);

>>sumsig=wave1+wave2;

>>subplot(311)

>>plot(10*log10(abs(wave1)))

>>subplot(312)

>> plot(10*log10(abs(wave2)))

>>subplot(313)

>>plot(10*log10(abs(sumsig)))

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Fading statistics
11

Rayleigh fading
 No Line of Sight (LoS) component presents

Rician fading
 Line of Sight (LoS) component presents
 Deterministic component, contributes significantly to the total
received power

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Cont’d
12

-5

signal strength (dBm)

-10

-15

-20

-25
Deep fading
(weak signal)
-30

-35
0 200 400 600 800 1000
#sample
ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV
 Fading Envelope
13

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Fading (phase 14
and amplitude)

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 On Demodulating
Random Amplitude and Random Phase
15

Random Amplitude Random Phase

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Fading Effect to BER
16

 Fading makes BER decreases only linearly with SNR/

Eb/N0
BER of BPSK modulation in Fading and AWGN channels
0
10
AWGN
Rayleigh
-1
10

-2
10
BER

-3
10

-4
10

-5
10

-6
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Eb/N0
ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV
 What happen to the tx signal?
17
Scatter plot S c atter plot
2 2

1.5 1.5

1 1

0.5 0.5
Quadrature

Quadrature
0 0

-0.5 AWGN -0.5

-1
n(t) -1

-1.5
TXSIG -1.5 AWGN
-2 -2
-2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
h(t)
FADING

In-Phase In-P hase

Scatter plot Scatter plot

2 2

1.5 1.5

1 1

0.5 0.5

Quadrature
Quadrature

AWGN
0 0

n(t)
-0.5 -0.5

-1 -1

FADING
ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV
-1.5 -1.5

FADING+AWGN
-2 -2
-2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
In-Phase In-Phase
 Cont’d
18

Fading effect is multiplicative to the transmit signal



y (t ) = s (t ) * h(t ) + n(t )
It causes rotation to the transmit signal
If we do not “undo” the rotation caused by fading, the
whole information will be detected erroneously

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Generating fading samples
19

 Create a fading object

 Generate a transmit signal
 use filter() which does not require generation of fading
sample

nCreate a fading object
nGenerate fading samples by filtering all one sequence with the
fading object as above
nGenerate a transmit signal
nConvolve the fading sample with the transmit signal
nIn case of no multipath, it reduces to multiplication

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 %create fading object with sampling period of 0.1ms, fD=50Hz
channel= rayleighchan(1e-4,50);

% Use PSK modulation object. 20

M=2;

hMod = modem.pskmod(M);

hDemod = modem.pskdemod(hMod);

%generate transmit signal (BPSK)

data=randint(1,50);

txsig=modulate(hMod,data);

scatterplot(txsig);

%generate faded signal (before adding noise)

fadesig=filter(channel, txsig);

scatterplot(fadesig);

%add noise
rxsig=awgn(fadesig,15);

%demodulate
recsig=demodulate(hDemod,rxsig);

%calculate the number of errors

sum(recsig~=data)

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 “undo” the fading
21
 How can we undo the fading effect???
 Fading is caused by the (radio) channel. Fading is not
known by transmitter and receiver
 What observed by a receiver is y(t)
Scatter plot
2

1.5

0.5

Quadrature
0

-0.5

-1

-1.5

-2
-2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV In-Phase
 Cont’d
22

Assume noise free condition



 y (t ) = s (t ) * h(t )
 Note that, when h(t)=d(t), the convolution reduces to
multiplication
Frequency domain representation (after Fourier
transform)

Y ( f ) = S( f ) • H ( f )


Y( f )

H( f ) =
S( f )
ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV
 Channel Estimation
23

The process of estimating H(f) from Y(f)

 In case of delta function is equivalent to estimating h(t) from
y(t)
How do we know H(f)?
 The receiver needs to know S(f)
 Transmitter must send sequence which is known to the
receiver : pilot sequence
 How many pilot symbols are enough (provide good channel
estimate)?

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Cont’d
24

Pilot sequence can be any sequence which is known

to both transmitter and receiver
Pilot sequence
 p= 1 1 1 1
 p= 1 -1 1 -1
 p= 1 1 -1 -1


ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Cont’d
25

In digital communication, user’s information/data is

grouped into blocks/frames before transmission
 Add pilot sequence to each frame before modulation
 Pilot sequence is known to the receiver and hence does not
carry information


ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Cont’d
26

N p −1
~ 1
h (t ) =
Np
∑ y ( n) • p ( n)
n =0

~
h (t ) : Channel estimate
Np : number of pilot symbols
y(n) : received signal samples
p(n) : n-th pilot symbol

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 demodulation
27

Before we perform demodulation on the user

information carrying signal we need to compensate
for the fading effect

~

y′(t ) = y (t ) ∗ conj (h (t ))
y’(t) is the input to the demodulator, not y(t)

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 %create fading object with sampling period of 0.1ms, fD=20Hz
channel= rayleighchan(1e-4,20);
%generate transmit signal (BPSK)
data=randint(1,50);
%BPSK modulation
modsig=pskmod(data,2);
28

%generate pilot signal

pilot= [1 1 -1 -1] ;
txsig =[pilot modsig];
scatterplot(txsig);

%generate faded signal (before adding noise)

fadesig=filter(channel, txsig);
scatterplot(fadesig);

%add noise
rxsig=awgn(fadesig,15);
scatterplot(rxsig);

%channel estimation and compensation

h_tilde = channelestimate(pilot, rxsig(1:4))
modemin= rxsig(5:end)*conj(h_tilde);
scatterplot(modemin);

%demodulate
recsig=pskdemod(modemin,2);
%calculate the number of errors
sum(recsig~=data)

ECEn4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 29

%function to perform channel estimation on

%bpsk modulated sequence
%[h_tilde]=channelestimate(pilot,rxsig)
function [h]=channelestimate(pilot, rxsig)
h = mean(rxsig.*pilot); %element wise multiplication
followed by averaging

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 BER of Interest
30

What is the target BER that we are interested at?

 Depend on the type of service
 E.g., voice requires BER of 10-3 after channel coding
 video, requires BER of 10-6 after channel coding
 Data requires error free. this, is achieved by using
retransmission (ARQ).

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV

 Cautions
31

Simulating fading channel requires much more

samples compared to AWGN channel
 Insufficient number of samples may lead to incorrect results

ECE 4202 COMM ENG LAB IV