Integration of propagation modeling in simulation of CDMA communication systems

The development of a propagation software package for characterizing both indoor and outdoor realistic wireless communication environments is described. The developed software is based on a ray-tracing method that provides channel parameters including path loss, delay spread, and angle of arrival/departure. Through a graphical user interface (GUI), propagation environments downloaded directly from .dxf files can be processed automatically. The obtained propagation results are then incorporated in Matlab (Simulink block) to simulate the performance of CDMA systems in realistic communications environments. The developed block is used to evaluate the interference suppression and SNR maximization of a maximum ratio combining scheme in RAKE receivers.