Delay Spread Characterization of the Aeronautical Channel

Abstract

Radio transmission channel influences greatly the quality of transmitted voice and data signal in terms of data rate and robustness. This degradation is as a result of many factors, notable amongst them are having multiple replica of the transmitted signal at the receiver (multipath), changes of frequency as a result of the movement of the aircraft (Doppler shift) and noise. This paper characterizes the scattered components of the aeronautical channel in terms of delay spread. Geometric representation is used to derive expressions for the maximum delay spread using the 2-ray model and the three dimensional model of the scattered path. Furthermore, the delay and Doppler frequencies are described as a function of the horizontal distance to the specular reflection point between a ground station and a test article. The simulated results are compared to measured data of related articles and the value of the maximum delay spread is compared with the proposed intersymbol guard band for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in the Integrated Network Enhanced Telemetry (iNET) program to see if this proposition can be adapted to the aeronautical channel.