MGF Approach to the Analysis of Generalized Two-Ray Fading Models

• Published in: IEEE transactions on wireless communications Vol. 14; no. 5; pp. 2548 - 2561
• Main Authors: Rao, Milind, Lopez-Martinez, F. Javier, Alouini, Mohamed-Slim, Goldsmith, Andrea
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-05-2015; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Analytical models; Channels; Envelope statistics; Exact solutions; Fading; fading channels; hyper- Rayleigh fading; Line of sight; Mathematical analysis; Measurement; moment generating function; multipath propagation; Rayleigh channels; Rician channels; Rician fading; Signal to noise ratio; small-scale fading; Statistics; Transaction processing; Two Ray; Wireless communication; fading channels; moment generating function; two ray; Envelope statistics; multipath propagation; small-scale fading; hyper-Rayleigh fading; Rician fading
• ISSN: 1536-1276; 1558-2248
• DOI: 10.1109/TWC.2014.2388213

We analyze a class of generalized two-ray (GTR) fading channels that consist of two line-of-sight (LOS) components with random phase plus a diffuse component. We derive a closed-form expression for the moment-generating function of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for this model, which greatly simplifies its analysis. This expression arises from the observation that the GTR fading model can be expressed in terms of a conditional underlying Rician distribution. We illustrate the approach to derive simple expressions for statistics and performance metrics of interest, such as the amount of fading, the level crossing rate, the symbol error rate, and the ergodic capacity in GTR fading channels. We also show that the effect of considering a more general distribution for the phase difference between the LOS components has an impact on the average SNR.