Pedagogy of wireless fading channels: A MATLAB® demo

Abstract

Courses in wireless communication systems are offered at undergraduate level electrical engineering programs. One of the topics of study in this course is the signal strength fluctuations in wireless channels referred to as fading arising from the existence of multiple paths between the transmitter and receiver. MATLAB® which is extensively used in engineering courses is an ideal tool to significantly enhance the pedagogy of fading. A demo based on MATLAB® has been developed offering a comprehensive tutorial view of fading. It takes into account several models frequently used to describe fading, such as the Rayleigh, Rician, Nakagami and Gaussian ones. Distributing the p-coded MATLAB® script to the students and allowing them to explore the various aspects of fading and refining the script to include additional elements based on their responses, the demo was simplified, expanded and thus, made more demonstrative of the concepts. The final version of MATLAB® demo allows the users to understand and appreciate the relationship of the number of paths and the strength of the line of sight component (LOS) to the various models based on the statistical validation providing a holistic picture of the short-term fading seen in wireless systems.