A study of the error distributions in the wideband mobile radio channel

The results of a software investigation of the error distributions in a GSM-based system over a frequency-selective mobile radio channel which has been modeled by eight independent delay taps are presented. A plot of the block error rate as a function of the normalized delay spread showed the existence of three regions, each characterizing a different relation between these two quantities. The probabilities, P(m,n), of having m errors in a block of n bits have been calculated for all the profiles, and the results show that the distribution of errors ranges from a random to a bursty one, depending on whether the energy is evenly distributed in the delay profile or not. Additional insight into the error mechanism is given from a study of the cumulative distribution of the burst and gap distributions for each profile considered