SEMINAR REPORT

On
MULTIPATH FADING
Undertaken at
PESIT, BANGALORE
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement
For the award of degree of
BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING
In
ELECTRONICS &COMMUNICATION
Submitted by
NAVEEN M
(1PI08EC068)
Under the guidance of

Internal guide HOD

Mr.Chaitanya N S Prof K.Raghunath
Dept of E&C Dept of E&C
PESIT PESIT
Bangalore Bangalore

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICDS AND COMMUNICATION

PES INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
(Autonomous under VTU, Belgaum)
BANGALORE-560085
FEB-MAY2011
 PES INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
(Autonomous Institute under VTU, Belgaum)
Bangalore

This is to certify that the seminar titled

MULTIPATH FADING
Has been successfully completed by
NAVEEN M
(1PI08EC068)
At
PESIT, Bangalore
In partial fulfilment for the degree of 6th semester in
Bachelor of Engineering in ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION
Of PES Institute of Technology during the session
Feb-May 2011

Internal guide HOD

Mr.Chaitanya N S Prof K.Raghunath
Dept of E&C Dept of E&C
PESIT PESIT
Bangalore Bangalore
 ABSTRACT

Multipath fading is a common phenomenon in wireless signal

transmission. When a signal is transmitted over a radio channel, it is
subject to reflection, refraction and diffraction. Therefore, multiple copies
of the same signal are received. This is undesirable because these
multiple copies of the signal produce ISI (inter symbol interference). The
communication environment changes quickly and thus introduces more
complexities and uncertainties to the channel response. This seminar
report offers a better understanding of this phenomenon. Methods of
overcoming multipath fading are briefly discussed along with their merits
and demerits.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all who made this

seminar a grand success.

I express my sincere thanks to my internal guide, Mr.Chaitanya N S,

Lecturer in department of Electronics and communication, PESIT for his
valuable guidance and support.

I wish to express my gratitude to the Head of the department of

Electronics and communication, PESIT Prof K.Raghunath for his support.

Last but not the least; the seminar would not have been a success
without the support of my family and friends.

Thank you all once again

Naveen M
(1PI08EC068)
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

TOPIC PAGE NUMBER

1. Introduction 1

2. Characterization of multipath 2
Fading channel

3. Problems Encountered While Using 4

Conventional Receiver

4. Methods of Minimizing the Inter 5

Symbol Interference

4.1. Increasing the Bit Period 5

4.2. Using Multiple Antenna Systems 6
4.3. The RAKE Receiver 6

5. Conclusion 9

6. References 10
 1. INTRODUCTION

Fundamentally, wireless communication channels are time varying,

multipath fading channels. In a wireless communication system, there are
many paths for a signal to travel from a transmitter to a receiver.
Sometimes there is a direct path where the signal travels without being
obstructed. In most cases, components of the signal are reflected by the
ground and objects between the transmitter and the receiver such as
buildings, vehicles, and hills or refracted by different atmospheric layers.
These components travel in different paths and merge at the receiver.
Figure 1 illustrates this phenomenon. Each path has a different physical
length. Thus, signals on each path suffer different transmission delays
due to the finite propagation velocity. The superposition of these signals
at the receiver results in destructive or constructive interference,
depending on the relative delays involved. The fact that the environment
changes as time passes leads to signal variation. This is called time
variant. Signals are also influenced by the motion of a terminal. A short
distance movement can cause an apparent change in the propagation
paths and in turn the strength of the received signals.

Figure 1
 2. Characterization of multipath fading channel

From the previous discussion, we can see that the multipath channel may
be modeled as shown in the below figure (Figure 2).

Both the propagation delays and the attenuation factors are time-variant
as a result of changes in the structure of the medium. The received
bandpass signal may be expressed in the form,

Where s (t) is the transmitted signal,  n t is the attenuation factor for

the signal received on the nth path and  ntis the propagation delay for
the nth path. S (t) can be expressed in terms of its complex envelope
(inphase component, SI (t)), and center frequency (fc) as,
Substituting equation (2) in (1) gives,

From equation (3), we can observe that the equivalent lowpass received
signal is,

It follows that the equivalent lowpass channel is described by the time-

variant impulse response given by,

C (; t) represents the response of the channel at time t due to an

impulse applied at time t- .
When there are a large number of signal propagation paths, the central

limit theorem can be applied. Thus c (; t) can be modeled as a complex-

valued Gaussian random process. The envelope c (; t) at any instant t

is Rayleigh-distributed, as shown in Figure 3. In this case the channel is
said to be a Rayleigh fading channel. In the event that there are fixed
scatterers or signal reflectors in the medium, in addition to randomly

moving scatterers, c (; t) can no longer be modeled as having zero

mean. In this case, the envelope c (; t) has a Rice distribution, as

shown in Figure 4, and the channel is said to be a Ricean fading channel.

3. Problems Encountered While Using Conventional Receiver.

In digital communication systems, the bits to be transmitted are

represented by different sinusoidal signals and ultimately, it is these
sinusoidal signals that are transmitted. If fc is the frequency of the carrier
sinusoidal signal S (t), its inphase component SI(t) will be equal to 1 for
all values of t. Substituting SI(t) =1 in equation (4), we obtain,

…
We may view the channel response in the above equation as the sum of a
number of vectors (Phasors), each of which has a time-variant amplitude
n (t) and phase n (t). In general, it takes large dynamic changes in the
physical medium to cause a large change in { n (t)}. On the other hand,
the phase {n (t)} changes by 2or more radians with relatively small
changes of the medium characteristics. {n (t)} is expected to be in an
unpredictable manner.
A phase change of  radians causes an inversion (change of sign) of the
received signal. When this signal gets added to the previous copies of the
signal, there is an error in the decision mechanism of the receiver. Since a
very small change in path length is enough to introduce a phase change
of  in the received signal (because of the normally very high value of f c),
the probability of error is very high if this signal is received using
conventional receivers (correlation receiver or matched filter receiver).

4. Methods of Minimizing the Inter Symbol Interference

As we have seen in the previous section, decoding digital data received

from a multipath fading channel using common receivers results in
unacceptably high probabilities of error. These problems can be overcome
using either of the methods mentioned below

4.1 Increasing the Bit Period

If we make the bit duration very much higher than the average value of
the maximum multipath delay, the sampling time of the decision device’s
output can be selected in such a way that the interference caused due to
the copies of the previous bits is minimized as shown in the following
figure (figure 5).
 Figure 5
Even though this method appears very simple, an increarse in the bit
period implies lower bit rates hence slower data transmission over the
same bandwidth. Therefore, this method can’t be used in applications that
demand high speed data transfer.

4.2 Using Multiple Antenna Systems

From equation (6), we observe that very small changes in the path length
travelled by the signal can cause a great change in the phase of the
received signal. We can use this fact to our advantage by installing
multiple antennas at the receiver.

The number of antennas and the spacing between them can be adjusted
in such a way that at all times, at least one of the antennae is receiving
copies of the signal that have interfered constructively. Diversity
combining techniques can then be used based on the output power from
each antenna to decide which antenna’s output is given more priority in
the decision making process.
This method is efficient in the sense that it gives acceptable probabilities
of error at reasonable data rates but the disadvantage is the increased
hardware cost and the need of very high precision in design.

4.3 The RAKE Receiver

A RAKE receiver utilizes multiple correlators to separately detect M

strongest multipath components. The output of each correlator is
weighted to provide better estimate of the transmitted signal than is
provided by a single component. Demodulation and bit decisions are then
based on the weighted outputs of the M correlators. A conceptual diagram
of the RAKE receiver is shown in figure 6.

Figure 6
Each correlator detects a time-shifted version of the original transmitted
signal, and each finger of the RAKE Correlates to a portion of the signal,
which is delayed by at least one chip in time from the other fingers.
Assume M correlators are used in the receiver to capture M strongest
multipath components. A weighting network is used to provide a linear
combination of the correlator output for bit decision. Correlator 1 is
synchronized to the strongest multipath m1. Multipath component m2
reaches the receiver t1 later than m1 but has low correlation with m1.
The M decision statistics are weighted to form an overall decision statistic
as shown in Figure 6. The outputs of the M correlators are denoted as Z 1,
Z2… and ZM. They are weighted by , 2… and M, respectively. The
weighting coefficients are based on the power or the SNR (Signal-to-
Noise Ratio) from each correlator output. If the power or SNR is small out
of a particular correlator, it will be assigned a small weighting factor, . If
maximal-ratio combining is used, following equation (7) can be written to
obtain the value of Z’.

… (7)
As in the case of adaptive equalizers and diversity combining, there are
many ways to generate the weighting coefficients. However, due to
Multiple Access Interference (MAI) in CDMA systems, RAKE fingers with
strong multipath amplitudes will not necessarily provide strong output
after correlation. Choosing weighting coefficients (Z’s) based on the actual
outputs of the correlator yields better RAKE performance.
Therefore, Artificial Neural Networks are used to determine these
weighing coefficients (Z’s). A known training data is first transmitted
through the channel and the response of various fingers is found and the
weights are assigned to each finger so that the output sequence is exactly
a replica of the input sequence.

Figure 7 given below shows the input given to a multipath fading channel
and the output received from it. Figure 8 shows the original data
sequence used to modulate the sinusoid at the transmitter and the output
of the rake receiver. We observe that the two waveforms in Figure 8 are
exactly the same except for the small delay. These figures illustrate the
effectiveness of the RAKE receiver and its immunity to multipath fading.
 5. Conclusion

Multipath fading is inherently present in all wireless communication

systems. In a multipath fading channel, multiple copies of the
transmitted signals are delayed and attenuated by different amounts
depending on the dynamically changing channel and received at the
receiver. This is a disadvantage when conventional receivers are used
because the signal transmitted for the previous ‘n’ symbols interfere with
the signal transmitted for the current symbol and hence cause erroneous
decisions to be made these concepts are brought out in a very simple yet
conclusive way in the first part of the report.

A multipath fading channel essentially sends multiple copies of the

transmitted signal to the receiver. This can be exploited to our advantage.
These aspects have been dealt with in the latter half of this report. The
RAKE receiver has been discussed in sufficient detail and its advantages
of giving low bit error rates (BER) at acceptably high bit rates
(communication speeds) at relatively low input signal to noise ratios
(SNR) have been discussed.
 6. References

1. J. G. Proakis and M. Salehi, “Digital Communications”, McGraw Hill,

2008;
2. L. W. Couch, “Digital and Analog Communication Systems”, Prentice
Hall, 1997.
3. Z. Y. Shen, et al, “Principals of Communication Systems”, Xidian
Univ. Press, 1997.
4. J. H. Schiller, “Mobile Communications”, Addison-Wesley, 2000;
5. X. M. Kong, “A Simulator for Time-varying Multipath Fading
Channels”, Master thesis, 2000.
6. Zhiwei Zeng, “Digital Communication via Multipath Fading Channel”,
November 2000.
7. W.D. Rummler, R.P. Coutts and M. Liniger, "Multipath Fading
Channel Models for Microwave Digital Radio," IEEE Comm. AMfag.,
vol. 24, no. l1, Nov. 1986.