Effect of pedestrian traffic on fade statistics of fixed wireless links in public spaces

This study presents an empirical characterisation of the wireless channel observed by static users in settings that correspond to populated open public spaces, where wireless services are increasingly being deployed. Link stability is analysed in terms of the temporal K-factor of the Ricean distribution. Second-order statistics were parameterised in terms of the Doppler shift, coherence time and level crossing rates. The authors found that the volume of pedestrian traffic had a very significant effect on the temporal K-factor, overshadowing the influence of line-of-sight or lack of it in the link. On the other hand, the volume of pedestrian traffic in the environment had no detectable effect on the second-order statistics of the channel.