Computer models for fading channels with applications to digital transmission

The authors describe computer models for Rayleigh, Rician, log-normal, and land mobile satellite fading channels. All computer models for the fading channels are based on the manipulation of a white Gaussian random process. This process is approximated by a sum of sinusoids with random phase angle. These models compare very well with analytical models in terms of their probability distribution of envelope and phase of the fading signal. For the land mobile satellite fading channel, results of level crossing rate and average fade duration are given. These results show that the computer models can provide a good coarse estimate of the time statistic of the faded signal. Also, for the land mobile satellite fading channel, the results show that a 3-pole Butterworth shaping filter should be used with the model. An example of the application of the land mobile satellite fading channel model to predict the performance of a differential phase-shift keying signal is described