Experimental time dispersion parameters of wireless channels over sea at 5.8 GHz

Many research works concern the design and development of new technological applications to improve marine communications. In this work, a propagation channel measurement campaign in maritime environments was carried out to investigate the impact of this kind of environments on wireless communications. In particular, we focus on time delay dispersion characteristics of mobile channels for the propagation over sea at 5.8 GHz. Specifically, a wireless link between a buoy and a ship is studied in different multipath conditions. The aim of our designed measurement system is measuring, first, a series of instantaneous Power Delay Profiles (PDPs) and, second, analyzing them over local regions. The empirical cumulative density functions of the delay parameters (mean delay and rms delay spread) and the coherence bandwidth are presented and discussed. As concluded, the delay parameters and the coherence bandwidth were found quite different even when the transmitter and receiver locations do not vary significantly.