Experiment No.

Simulation of RMS Delay Spread

Equipment: PC with Octave and Printer

Theory: In radio systems with low antenna heights, there are often multiple indirect paths
between the transmitter and receiver due to reflections from surrounding objects, in addition to
the direct path when there is line-of-sight. Such multipath propagation is particularly significant
in urban environments, where the sides of buildings and paved road surfaces provide strong
reflections. As a result, the received signal consists of the summation of several components
having various amplitudes, phase angles and directions of arrival.

Figure 3.1: Illustration of reflections of various kinds

The resulting spatial variability of signal strength can be viewed as having two regimes:

a) rapid fading which varies over distances of the order of a wavelength due primarily to changes
in phase angles of different signal components.

b) slow fading which varies over larger distances due primarily to changes in shadowing loss by
surrounding objects.

In addition, the various signal components can be Doppler shifted by different amounts due to
the movement of the mobile or of reflecting objects such as vehicles.

The multipath mobile channel can be characterized in terms of its impulse response which varies
at a rate dependent on the speed of the mobile and/or the scatterers. Therefore, a receiver has to
be able to cope with the signal distortion arising from echoes in the channel as well as the rapid

Page | 1
changes in the nature of this distortion. Such characteristics of the mobile radio channel are
described by the power delay profiles and the Doppler spectra which are obtained from wideband
channel sounding measurements.

Delay Spread

As an electromagnetic wave can travel from the transmitter to the receiver via multiple paths, the
signal can reach the receiver with interference from its own echoes. Delay spread measures the
effect of the time dispersion in multipath channels. Thus, the total power received in a multipath
wireless channel occurs over a spread of time referred to as the delay spread.

Figure shows how a transmitted pulse its received at the receiver with different signal strength as
it travels through a multipath channel with different propagation delays (τ, τ1, τ2).

Figure 3.2: Power Delay Profile

Detection of the first arrival peak is not an easy task to do when generating a power delay
profile. Generally, one might think that the first peak corresponds to the maximum peak of the
signal, but this is not necessarily the case. It may be that the peak of maximum energy is not the
first peak, as this can suffer greater attenuation than other arrivals in Non-Line of Sight (NLOS)
situations.

Power Delay Profile is usually supplied as a table of values obtained from empirical data and it
serves as a guidance to system design. Nevertheless, it is not an accurate representation of the
real environment in which the mobile is destined to operate at.

Power delay profile is a good representation of the average “geometry” of the transmitter, the
receiver, and the reflectors. To quantify “how spread-out” the arriving signals are, we use time
dispersion parameters:

Excess delay: the delay with respect to the first arriving signal ( )

Maximum excess delay: the excess delay of the latest arriving Multi Path Component (MPC)

Page | 2
Mean excess delay: the “mean” excess delay of all arriving MPC

RMS delay spread: the “standard deviation” of the excess delay of all arriving MPC

In a nutshell, the RMS delay spread indicates the capability of the communication channel of
supporting high data rate communications by implying the probability of performance
degradation which may occur due to the ISI because of multipath signal propagation.

Even though a same signal is transmitted from single transmission antenna, the signal may go
through various different path. Each of the different path may cause different travel distance if
the signal get reflected by one or more obstacles (like buildings) and in some case different path
may has different physical property of propagation media, so it is higly likely that the signal
traveling through different path would arrive at the reciever antenna at different timing. So if you
send a signal from a transmitter antenna and measure the arrival time at the reciever antenna
which is a certain distance away from the transmitter antenna, you would get multiple different
arrival timing.

If you plot those arrival timing on the axis of time, you would see a certain variation (spread) of
those values. This spread is called 'Delay Spread'.

Power delay profile

Figure 3.3: (1) Discrete PDP (2) Continuous/exponential PDP

For continuous PDP, the RMS delay spread (τrms) can be calculated as

Page | 3
Knowledge of the delay spread is essential in system design for determining the trade-off
between the symbol rate of the system and the complexity of the equalizers at the receiver. The
ratio of RMS delay spread (τrms ) and symbol time duration (Tsym ) quantifies the strength of
intersymbol interference (ISI). Typically, when the symbol time period is greater than 10 times
the RMS delay spread, no ISI equalizer is needed in the receiver. The RMS delay spread
obtained from the PDP must be compared with the symbol duration to arrive at this conclusion.

With the power delay profile, one can classify a multipath channel into frequency selective or
frequency non-selective category. The derived parameter, namely, the maximum excess delay
together with the symbol time of each transmitted symbol, can be used to classify the channel
into frequency selective or non-selective channel.

PDP can be used to estimate the average power of a multipath channel, measured from the first
signal that strikes the receiver to the last signal whose power level is above certain threshold.
This threshold is chosen based on receiver design specification and is dependent on receiver
sensitivity and noise floor at the receiver.

Maximum excess delay, also called maximum delay spread, denoted as (Tm), is the relative time
difference between the first signal component arriving at the receiver to the last component
whose power level is above some threshold. Maximum delay spread (Tm) and the symbol time
period (Tsym) can be used to classify a channel into frequency selective or non-selective
category. This classification can also be done using coherence bandwidth (a derived parameter
from spaced frequency correlation function which in turn is the frequency domain representation
of power delay profile).

A channel is classified as frequency selective, if the maximum excess delay is greater than the
symbol time period, i.e, Tm > Tsym. This introduces Intersymbol interference into the signal that

Page | 4
is being transmitted, thereby distorting it. This occurs since the signal components (whose
powers are above either a threshold or the maximum excess delay), due to multipath, extend
beyond the symbol time. Intersymbol interference can be mitigated at the receiver by an
equalizer.

On the other hand, if the maximum excess delay is less than the symbol time period, i.e, Tm <
Tsym, the channel is classified as frequency non-selective or zero-mean channel. Here, all the
scattered signal components (whose powers are above either a specified threshold or the
maximum excess delay) due to the multipath, arrive at the receiver within the symbol time. This
will not introduce any ISI, but the received signal is distorted due to inherent channel effects like
SNR condition. Equalizers in the receiver are not needed.

Conclusion:

Page | 5