A UHF channel simulator for digital mobile radio

Abstract

A device to simulate the channel propagation characteristics of the ground mobile environment at UHF has been designed, built, and characterized. This device provides a flexible, easily changed set of simulated channel characteristics, which allows the performance of a mobile radio unit to be evaluated in the laboratory under controlled conditions. The channel simulator was designed to simulate mobile platform speeds up to 675 mi/h and multipath components having differential delays approaching 10 µs. The channel simulator can provide up to four easily selectable, independently fading, multipath components, having calculated time delay spreads of up to 3.5 µs. The adjustable fading bandwidths and the exceptional long delays were implemented using the relative new signal processing technologies of charged-coupled devices and surface wave devices. Envelope statistics such as fading distributions and level crossing rates produced by the channel simulator show excellent agreement with theoretical prediction and documented experimental data.