Modeling and Simulation of Fading and Pathloss in OPNET for Range Communications

In this paper, we address two important issues in OPNET-based modeling and simulation for range wireless communications. The first issue is to model the fading effect in wireless communications. The present OPNET wireless suite views all wireless channels as Gaussian channels and ignores the fading effect. We add a Rayleigh fading channel model to OPNET and implement the fading effect in simulation by modifying the bit-error rate curve used by OPNET. The second issue is to model the pathloss in wireless environments. The present OPNET wireless suite uses a fixed value of the pathloss exponent without considering that different environments have different pathloss exponents. We solve this problem by providing a user with the ability to choose a suitable pathloss exponent from 2 to 5 according to the environment. Numerical results are presented to verify our enhanced wireless models and demonstrate their applications in OPNET wireless network simulation