The symmetrical η-κ distribution: a general fading distribution

This paper specializes and parameterizes the general result presented elsewhere in the literature in order to introduce, fully characterize, and investigate the Symmetrical η-κ Distribution, a general distribution used to describe the statistical variation of the envelope in a fast fading environment. It proposes estimators for the involved parameters and uses field measurements to validate the distribution. In spite of its specialization, the Symmetrical η-κ Distribution still includes, as special cases, important distributions such as Rayleigh, Rice, Hoyt, Nakagami-q, and One-Sided Gaussian. The fact that the Symmetrical η-κ Distribution has one more parameter than the well-known distributions renders it more flexible. Of course, in situations in which those distributions included in it give good results a better fitting is given by the Symmetrical η-κ Distribution. In addition, in many other situations in which these distributions give poor results a good fitting may be found through the Symmetrical η-κ Distribution. More specifically, its nonmonomodal feature finds applications in several circumstances, examples of which are given in this paper.