Measurement, Modeling, and OFDM Synchronization for the Wideband Mobile-to-Mobile Channel

Wideband measurements of the mobile-to-mobile channel, especially of the harshest channels, are necessary for proper design and certification testing of mobile-to-mobile communications systems. A complete measurement implies that the Doppler and delay characteristics are measured jointly. However, such measurements have not previously been published. The main objective of the proposed research is to develop channel models for specific scenarios from data obtained in a wideband mobile-to-mobile measurement campaign in the 5.9 GHz frequency band. For this purpose we developed a channel sounding system including a novel combined waveform. In order to quantify and qualify either the recorded channel or the proposed generated channel, we developed a simulation test-bed that includes all the characteristics of the proposed digital short range communications (DSRC) standard. The resulting channel models needed to comply with the specifications required by hardware channel emulators or software channel simulators. From the obtained models, we selected one to be included in the IEEE 802.11p standard certification test. To further aid in the development of software radio based receivers, we also developed an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) synchronization algorithm to analyze and compensate synchronization errors produced by inaccessible system clocks.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Ingram, Mary Ann; Committee Member: Lanterman, Aaron; Committee Member: Li, Ye; Committee Member: Pratt, Thomas G.; Committee Member: Rogers, Peter H

Stationarity analysis of V2I radio channel in a suburban environment

Due to rapid changes in the environment, vehicular communication channels no longer satisfy the assumption of wide-sense stationary uncorrelated scattering. The non-stationary fading process can be characterized by assuming local stationarity regionswith finite extent in time and frequency. The local scattering function (LSF) and channel correlation function (CCF) provide a framework to characterize the mean power and correlation of the non-stationary channel scatterers, respectively. In this paper, we estimate the LSF and CCF from measurements collected in a vehicle-to-infrastructure radio channel sounding campaign in a suburban environment in Lille, France. Based on the CCF, the stationarity region is evaluated in time as 567 ms and used to capture the non-stationary fading parameters. We obtain the time-varying delay and Doppler power profiles fromthe LSF, and we analyze the corresponding root-mean-square delay and Doppler spreads. We show that the distribution of these parameters follows a lognormal model. Finally, application relevance in terms of channel capacity and diversity techniques is discussed. Results show that the assumption of ergodic capacity and the performance of various diversity techniques depend on the stationarity and coherence parameters of the channel. The evaluation and statistical modeling of such parameters can provide away of tracking channel variation, hence, increasing the performance of adaptive schemes

Propagation aspects of vehicle-to-vehicle communications - an overview

Vehicle-to-vehicle (VTV) wireless communications have many envisioned applications in traffic safety, congestion avoidance, etc., but the development of suitable communications systems and standards requires accurate models for the VTV propagation channel. This paper provides an overview of existing VTV channel measurement campaigns, describing the most important environments, and the delay spread and Doppler spreads obtained in them. Statistical as well as geometry-based channel models have been developed based on measurements and intuitive insights. A key characteristic of VTV channels is the nonstationarity of their statistics, which has major impact on the system performance. Extensive references are provided

MIMO channel modelling and simulation for cellular and mobile-to-mobile

Recently, mobile-to-mobile (M2M) communications have received much attention due to several emerging applications, such as wireless mobile ad hoc networks, relay-based cellular networks, and dedicated short range communications (DSRC) for intelligent transportation systems (e.g., IEEE 802.11p standard). Different from conventional fixed-to-mobile (F2M) cellular systems, in M2M systems both the transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) are in motion and often equipped with low elevation antennas. Multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) technologies, employing multiple antennas at both the Tx and Rx, have widely been adopted for the third generation (3G) and beyond-3G (B3G) F2M cellular systems due to their potential benefits of improving coverage, link reliability, and overall system capacity. More recently, MIMO has been receiving more and more attention for M2M systems as well. Reliable knowledge of the propagation channel obtained from channel measurements and corresponding channel models serve as the enabling foundation for the design and analysis of MIMO F2M and M2M systems. Furthermore, the development of accurate MIMO F2M and M2M channel simulation models plays a major role in the practical simulation and performance evaluation of these systems. These form the primary motivation behind our research on MIMO channel modelling and simulation for F2M cellular and M2M communication systems. In this thesis, we first propose a new wideband theoretical multiple-ring based MIMO regular-shaped geometry-based stochastic model (RS-GBSM) for non-isotropic scattering F2M macro-cell scenarios and then derive a generic space-time-frequency (STF) correlation function (CF). The proposed theoretical reference wideband model can be reduced to a narrowband one-ring model, a new closed-form STF CF of which is derived as well. Narrowband and wideband sum-of-sinusoids (SoS) simulation models are then developed, demonstrating a good agreement with the corresponding reference models in terms of correlation functions. Secondly, based on a well-known narrowband two-ring single-input single-output (SISO) M2M channel reference model, we propose new deterministic and stochastic SoS simulation models for non-isotropic scattering environments. The proposed deterministic simulator is the first SISO M2M deterministic simulator with good performance, while the proposed stochastic simulator outperforms the existing one in terms of fitting the desired statistical properties of the corresponding reference model. Thirdly, a new adaptive narrowband MIMO M2M RS-GBSM is proposed for nonisotropic scattering environments. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed M2M model is the first RS-GBSM that has the ability to study the impact of the vehicular traffic density on channel statistics. From the proposed theoretical reference model, we comprehensively investigate some important M2M channel statistics including the STF CF, space-Doppler-frequency power spectral density, envelope level crossing rate, and average fade duration. A close agreement between some channel statistics obtained from the proposed reference model and measurement data is observed, confirming the utility of our model. Finally, we extend the above narrowband model to a new wideband MIMO M2M RSGBSM with respect to the frequency-selectivity. The proposed wideband reference model is validated by observing a good match between some statistical properties of the theoretical model and available measurement data. From the wideband reference model, we further design new wideband deterministic and stochastic SoS simulation models. The proposed wideband simulators can be easily reduced to narrowband ones. The utilities of the newly derived narrowband and wideband simulation models are validated by comparing their statistical properties with those of the corresponding reference models. The proposed channel reference models and simulators are expected to be useful for the design, testing, and performance evaluation of future MIMO cellular and M2M communication systems.Scottish Funding Counci

First results from car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure radio channel measurements at 5.2GHZ

Car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure (henceforth called C2X) communications are constantly gaining importance for road-safety and other applications. In order to design efficient C2X systems, an understanding of realistic C2X propagation channels is required, but currently, only few measurements have been published. This paper presents a description of an extensive measurement campaign recently conducted in an urban scenario, a rural scenario, and on a highway. We focused on 4 ÿ 4 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) measurements at a center frequency of 5.2 GHz with high Doppler resolution. As first results from evaluating the measurement data we present the power-delay profile and the delay-Doppler spectrum from a selected, especially interesting measurement run from an urban measurement route. We observe dispersed Doppler contributions between zero and the Doppler shift corresponding to the relative speed of the cars, and very concentrated (in the Doppler domain), contributions from double reflections. Surprisingly, we also found paths with larger delays and zero Doppler shifts