A case for considering hyper-Rayleigh fading channels

This work is motivated by the problem of characterizing small-scale radio propagation environments for wireless sensor networks. If sensors are statically deployed near the ground or within structures, temporal fading may not exist but the channel may nevertheless experience severe frequency-selective behavior. The work presents real-world, frequency-selective fading data measured for in-vehicle wireless sensor applications. This fading data often exhibit statistics more severe than predicted by the Rayleigh fading model; a scenario referred herein as to as being hyper-Rayleigh. A two-ray, small-scale model is proposed as a new worst-case for this application space.