Basics of Wireless Communications for Positioning

Abstract

This chapter introduces the basics of wireless communications with particular focus on their relation to mobile positioning. It describes the principles of radio propagation by classifying the physical phenomena underlying wireless communications in terms of large‐scale fading and small‐scale fading. The chapter introduces the possibilities and challenges of multiple‐antenna techniques, focusing on spatial diversity and spatial multiplexing and their achievable gains, namely array gain, diversity gain, multiplexing gain and interference reduction. The chapter presents the duplexing methods for accommodating two‐way transmission over the wireless channel. It overviews modulation and access techniques, with particular focus on multicarrier techniques and access methods such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). The chapter describes the basics of some radio resource management (RRM) techniques, namely handoff and interference management, channel reuse, channel reservation and power control, and illustrates how localization can benefit from them and vice versa. It addresses principles of over‐the‐air synchronization.