Flat fading channel envelope prediction and equalization

Fading envelopes generated under constant velocity and constant acceleration conditions, modeling mobile communication scenarios, are predicted with a time-varying recursive linear predictor. The envelope prediction is used in an automatic gain controller with the idea of compensating for the amplitude distortion of a flat fading channel. Assuming that the difference between the phase distortions of two consecutive symbols is very small, the effect of the phase distortion is removed using a differential modulation scheme. Simulations show that, with fading envelope compensation, highly bandwidth efficient modulation schemes such as QAM can be used even in a flat fading environment.