FEDERAL TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL INSTITUTE

FACULTY ELECTRICAL-ELECTRONICS AND IT

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL-ELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGY

Antenna and wave propagation

ECTe 3034

Chapter: 7

Propagation impairments and Performance

enhancement Techniques
 Atmospheric Effects

• Uncondensed water vapour and oxygen can be

strongly absorptive of radio signals.
• This is due to the existence of absorption lines in
the elements composing atmospheric gases, or
bands of frequencies where these gases naturally
absorb photon energy.
• This occurs at the resonance frequencies of the
molecules themselves.
• The most important gases to consider are water
vapour and oxygen.
• An attenuation or absorption
constant is defined for oxygen and
water vapour, and usually has units
of dB/km
• the attenuation constants are
functions of altitude, since they
depend on factors such
as temperature and pressure.
 Attenuation by Rain

• When a plane wave strikes a raindrop,

some of the energy in the plane wave is
absorbed by the
water, while some of it is scattered.
• Scattering loss is relevant because power
may be scattered in directions other than
the desired direction of interest.
• the attenuation depends strongly on the type of
rain, wind conditions, frequency, and incident
wave polarization.
• Wave passing through rain falling at an angle may
also be repolarized, i.e. converted from one
polarization to another, though we will not delve
into this process here.
• It is interesting to note that the attenuation rate is
polarization-dependent, which is a consequence
of the raindrop having an elongated shape in the
vertical direction, which in turns produces
different scattering behaviour for vertical
polarization
and horizontal polarization.
• Rain attenuation can produce large
changes in the received signal power,
forcing margins in a link budget to be
much larger than if the rain did not exist.
 Fading
•In wireless communication, fading is a
phenomenon in which the strength and
quality of a radio signal fluctuate over time
and distance.

•Fading is caused by a variety of factors,

including multipath propagation,
atmospheric conditions, and the movement
of objects in the transmission path.
•Fading can have a significant impact on
the performance of wireless
communication systems, particularly those
that operate in high-frequency bands. There
are two types of fading and the sub-categories.

• 1. Large Scale Fading

• 2. small Scale Fading
•1. Large Scale Fading: This refers to the
attenuation of signal power due to obstacles
between the transmitter and receiver.
• It also covers the attenuation and fluctuations of
signal when the signal is transmitted over a long
distance (usually in kilometers).
 Path Loss:
• It refers to the attenuation when a signal is
transmitted over large distances. Wireless
signals spread as they propagate through the
medium and as the distance increases, the
energy per unit area starts decreasing.
• This is a fundamental loss that is independent
of the type of transmitter and medium.
• Although, we can minimize its effects by
increasing the capture area/dimension of the
receiver.
 Shadowing:
 This refers to the loss in signal power due to the obstructions in
the path of propagation.
 There are a few ways in which shadowing effects can minimize
signal loss.
 One that is most effective, is to have a Line-Of-Sight propagation.

Shadowing losses also depend on the frequency of the EM wave.

 As we know, EM Waves can penetrate through various surfaces
but at the cost of loss in power i.e signal attenuation.
 The losses depend on the type of the surface and frequency of the
signal.
 Generally, the penetration power of a signal is inversely
proportional to the frequency of the signal.
 2. Small Scale Fading:
• This refers to the fluctuations in signal strength
and phase over short distance and small duration
of time.
•It is also called Rayleigh Fading.
• Small Scale Fading affects almost all forms of
wireless communication and overcoming them is
a necessity to increase efficiency and decrease
error.
 Fast Fading:
 It occurs mainly due to reflections for surfaces
and movement of transmitter or receiver.
 High doppler spread is observed in the fast
fading with Doppler bandwidth comparable to or
greater than the bandwidth of the signal and the
channel variations are as fast or faster than the
signal variations.
 It causes linear distortions in the shape of the
baseband signal and creates
Inter Symbol Interference (ISI).

•Doppler Spread
 Doppler spread is a type of small-scale
fading that occurs when there is relative
motion between the transmitter and the
receiver.
 The relative motion causes a shift in the
frequency of the transmitted signal,
known as the Doppler shift.
 The different components of the signal
can arrive at the receiver at different
times, causing interference and rapid
variations in signal amplitude and phase.
• Multipath delay spread can cause Inter-
Symbol Interference (ISI), where symbols
in the transmitted signal overlap and
interfere with each other, leading to
errors in the received signal.
 Slow Fading:
 It occurs mainly due to shadowing where large
buildings or geographical structures obstruct
the LOS.
 Low Doppler spread is observed in Slow
Fading with the Doppler bandwidth being
smaller compared to the bandwidth of the
signal and the channel variations are slow
relative to the signal variations.
 It results in reduction of SNR which can be
overcome using error correction techniques and
receiver diversity techniques.
 Multipath Fading:
 It occurs when a signal reaches the receiver
from various path i.e. when multipath
propagation takes place.
 Multipath fading can affect all ranges of
frequencies starting from low frequency to
microwave and beyond.
 It affects both the amplitude and the phase of
the signal causing phase distortions and ISI.
Multipath fading can affect signal transmission
in two ways:
 Flat Fading: In flat fading, all frequency
components get affected almost equally.
Flat multipath fading causes the amplitude to
fluctuate over a period of time.
• Selective Fading: Selective Fading or
Selective Frequency Fading refers to multipath
fading when the selected frequency component
of the signal is affected.
• It means selected frequencies will have
increased error and attenuation as compared to
other frequency components of the same
 Diversity Techniques
• Diversity is a good technique applied in mobile
communication receiver circuits where there
are multipath environments.
• The diversity techniques use the nature of the
propagation path characteristics for improving
the sensitivity of receivers.
• It will improve the wireless links, at less cost.
• It does not require prior training because a
training sequence is not needed by a
transmitter
 Types of Diversity Techniques

• Space diversity techniques

• Polarization diversity technique
• Time diversity technique
• Frequency diversity technique
•Space Diversity Technique
• The space diversity scheme is also called
as ‘antenna diversity scheme‘.
• In the space diversity scheme, the receiver
configuration is quite simple.
• Several number of diversity branches are
selectable.
• For producing diversity reception at each and
every cell site, multiple base station receiving
antennas are used effectively.
•It is important to note that main scattering takes
place in ground which is in the vicinity of the
mobile unit, and hence to attain decor relation,
the antennas at base station have to be placed
with necessary separation distances.
•This separation distance can be in order or tens
of wavelength (λ) value with respect to base
station.
•Generally, the space diversity technique can be
used at base station or mobile or at both ends.
 Selective Diversity

•In selective diversity combining, the branches

having the strongest received signal will be
selected.
•In selective diversity method, ‘n’ number of
demodulators are used and their gains can be
adjusted to give mean signal to noise ratio (SNR)
for every diversity branch.
•Finally, the best signal that possess good signal
strength will be sent to a demodulator.
•It is also seen that practical diversity system has to
be carefully such that reciprocal of the mobile signal
fading rate is a longer than the internal constant
values of selection diversity circuitry.
 Polarization Diversity Techniques

•In polarization diversity, both horizontal and

vertical polarization are involved.
•In case, if a signal is transmitted by a pair of
polarized antennas, and they are received by
another pair of antennas, then, two uncorrelated
fading signals will be received because different
fading variations are experienced by horizontal
and vertical polarizations and due to different
reflection coefficient values of the tall building
walls.
•The measured vertical and horizontal
polarization signal paths between the base
station and mobile are found to be uncorrelated.
•Also, the decorrelation in vertical and horizontal
polarization for signals is due to multiple
reflections in the radio channel between base
stations and mobile antennas.
•There will be an amount of dependence of
received polarization on transmitted polarization.
 Time Diversity Techniques

•In the time diversity method, the information is

transmitted repeatedly at specific time spacing
that would exceed the coherence time of the
mobile channel, and this will lead to repetition of
signals for several times; irrespective of fading
conditions.
•Thus, when an identical information is sent for
different time slots, it is possible to obtain
diversity branch signals.
 Frequency Diversity

•In this method of frequency diversity, the

information is transmitted on many carrier
frequencies. The idea behind this is that if the
frequencies are separated by more than that of
the coherence bandwidth of the mobile channel,
these would be uncorrelated with each other and
hence these would not experience same fading
status.
•Also under channels, uncorrelated situations, the
occupancy of fading will be multiple of the
individual fading probability (occurrence).
•The frequency diversity scheme is applied in
microwave fields whenever line of sight (LOS)
links is used.
• That is in LOS links, they may carry many
channels in the frequency division multiplex mode
(FDM).
•There are chances of deep fades in frequency
diversity due to tropospheric propagation and the
resulting refractions of the signal.
•The fading variation independence factor
between the separated frequency
components is a main effect with respect to
land mobile communication and it is known
as frequency diversity effect.
•Thus, the frequency diversity is a popular
diversity reception technique.