Attenuation Time Series Generator with Markov Model of Fade and Interfade Durations

During the design of terrestrial or satellite linked high speed radio connections the statistics of path attenuation on the link plays an important role. The effects like different type of precipitation, the multipath propagation, interference or the scintillation cause short and long term attenuation. Synthetic attenuation time series can be used to model a radio link and calculate first and second order statistics to be taken into account in system design for several reasons like calculating the system outage or unavailability period, sharing the system resources, apply fade mitigation techniques, select the right coding scheme etc. Fade duration is one of the dynamic aspects of path attenuation that corresponds to the time length during which a fixed threshold is exceeded by path attenuation. To characterize the periods of time between two fades, the statistics of interfade duration can be used. The attenuation time series model presented in this contribution based on a fade and interfade duration Markov model (Csurgai-Horvath and Bito, 2006). This model applies a Fritchman´s partitioned Markov chain (1967) to simulate the fade and interfade process. The model is applicable to calculate fade and interfade duration periods for any threshold thus it can be used to generate attenuation time series for any desired duration. In this contribution we apply an attenuation dependent Markov chain model to calculate fade and interfade durations for the different thresholds. The Markov chain is based on a partitioned 5-state Fritchman´s Markov model parameterized from a land mobile satellite measurement data on a highway moving vehicle with a speed of 60 km/h. The fading effects observed during this measurement are mainly caused by the multipath propagation.