Deep Fading Research Articles

CRGAN-based turbo code interleaver for underwater acoustic communications

This paper proposes a channel response generative adversarial network (CRGAN)-based turbo code interleaver that estimates a channel response and interleaver indices at a transmitter by using a sound speed profile (SSP) and the ocean environments without feedback from a receiver. The interleaver indices are designed to allocate important bits from the turbo code to subcarriers with great channel gains, which reduces them from being affected by deep fading. Computer simulations and practical ocean experiments demonstrate that the proposed method estimates the channel response with low mean squared errors (MSEs) and improves bit error rate (BER) performances compared with the conventional method.

Orthogonal Space-Time Block Coding for Double Scattering V2V Links with LOS and Ground Reflections

This work presents the performance analysis of space-time block codes (STBCs) for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) fast-fading channels in scenarios with modified line-of-sight (LOS). The objective is to investigate how the V2V MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) system performance is influenced by two important impairments: deterministic ground reflections and an increased Doppler frequency (time-variant channels). STBCs of various coding rates (using an approximation model) are evaluated by assuming antenna elements distributed over the surface of two contiguous vehicles. A multi-ray model is used to study the multiple constructive/destructive interference patterns of the transmitted/received signals by all pairs of Tx–Rx antenna links considering ground reflections. A double scattering model is used to include the effects of stochastic channel components that depend on the Doppler frequency. The results show that STBCs are capable of counteracting fades produced by destructive self-interference components across a range of inter-vehicle distances and for a range of Doppler frequency values. Notably, the effectiveness of STBCs in deep fades is shown to outperform schemes with exclusive receive diversity, despite the interference created by the loss of orthogonality in time-varying channels with a moderate increase of Doppler frequency (mainly due to higher vehicle speeds, higher frequency or shorter time slots). Higher-order STBCs with rate losses are also evaluated using an approximation model, showing interesting gains even for low coding rate performance, particularly when accompanied by a multiple antenna receiver. Overall, these results can shed light on how to exploit transmit diversity in time-varying vehicular channels with modified LOS.

Tandem Spreading Multiple Access With MIMO

With the massive deployment of 5G commercial applications, the Internet of Everything promotes the transformation and upgrading of the society production mode. The Internet of Things (IoT) is supported by the massive machine-type communications (mMTC), which is one of the three major application scenarios of 5G. Recently, a novel spreading based non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme named tandem spreading multiple access (TSMA) has been proposed for grant-free random access in mMTC. However, TSMA only considers the case of single antenna, the connectivity expansion on spatial domain has not been considered. In this article, a multi-antenna system scheme of TSMA (MIMO-TSMA) is proposed to scale up user connections. In this scheme, spectrum efficiency can be promoted by sharing the time frequency resources in different beams. In the meantime, scheme against channel deep fading is considered in this work. The simulation results show that MIMO-TSMA can effectively take advantage of MIMO and TSMA to enhance the mMTC system performance.

Opportunistic Fluid Antenna Multiple Access

Multiple access can be realized by utilizing the spatial moments of deep fades, using fluid antennas. The interference immunity for fluid antenna multiple access (FAMA), nevertheless, comes with the requirement of a large number of ports at each user. To alleviate this, we study the synergy between opportunistic scheduling and FAMA. A large pool of users permits selection of favourable users for FAMA and decreases the outage probability at each selected user. Our objective is to characterize the benefits of opportunistic scheduling in FAMA. In particular, we derive the multiplexing gain of the opportunistic FAMA network in closed form and upper bound the required number of users in the pool to achieve a given multiplexing gain. Also, we find a lower bound on the required outage probability at each user for achieving a given network multiplexing gain, from which the advantage of opportunistic scheduling is illustrated. In addition, we investigate the rate of increase of the multiplexing gain with respect to the number of users in the pool, and derive a tight approximation to the multiplexing gain, expressed in closed form. As a key result of our analysis, we obtain an operating condition on the product of the number of users in the pool and the number of ports at each fluid antenna that ensures a high multiplexing gain. Numerical results demonstrate clear benefits of opportunistic scheduling in FAMA networks, and corroborate our analytical results.

Temporal characterization of pre-midnight fading events over low latitudes

Several works investigated aspects of amplitude scintillation over low-latitude regions. Some of these studies also addressed characteristics and consequences of fading events in receivers and systems relying on information from satellites. It is now known that amplitude scintillation severity in transionospheric signals is stronger around the region of the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly and depends on the signal propagation path. However, a temporal characterization of the occurrence of amplitude scintillation and fading events over distinct latitudes is still needed. In this work this temporal analysis was done by using data from 4 ground-based scintillation monitor stations with distinct dip latitudes over the southern hemisphere (Brazilian region). The period of observation covers 5 months during the peak of the last solar cycle, and the hours considered are from 19:00 LT up to 23:30 LT for every station. The analyses revealed that the occurrence of scintillation for all the stations peaks at 21:00 LT, with weaker/stronger scintillation levels for stations closer to the dip equator/Equatorial Ionization Anomaly, respectively. More importantly, the results demonstrated that deep fading events are concentrated in the early hours of the night for all levels of scintillation. The probabilities of deep fading events peaks at 21:00 LT, decaying considerably for later hours. The results also revealed that the deepest fading experienced occurs in the earlier hours and that the depth of the fading decreases as later hours are considered. The probabilities of a given depth for the deepest fading also decay after peaking at 21:00 LT. All these findings provide a temporal characterization that can be insightful to users of information from satellites whose links are susceptible to problems such as cycle slips and loss-of-lock, especially in the earlier hours of the night.

Multi-Slot Over-the-Air Computation in Fading Channels

IoT systems typically involve separate data collection and processing, and face the scalability issue when the number of nodes increases. For some tasks, only the result of data fusion is needed. Then, the whole process can be realized in an efficient way, integrating the data collection and fusion in one step by over-the-air computation (AirComp). Its shortcoming, however, is signal distortion when channel gains of nodes are different, which cannot be well solved by transmission power control alone in times of deep fading. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a multi-slot over-the-air computation (MS-AirComp) framework for the sum estimation in fading channels. Compared with conventional data collection (one slot for each node) and AirComp (one slot for all nodes), MS-AirComp is an alternative policy that lies between them, exploiting multiple slots to improve channel gains so as to facilitate power control. Avoiding to obtain instantaneous channel gains of all nodes at the sink is a key point. Specifically, the transmissions are distributed over multiple slots and a threshold of channel gain is set for distributed transmission scheduling. Each node transmits its signal only once, in the slot when its channel gain first gets above the threshold, or in the last slot when its channel gain remains below the threshold. Theoretical analysis gives the closed-form of the computation error in fading channels, based on which the optimal parameters are found. Noticing that computation error tends to be reduced at the cost of more transmission power, a method is suggested to control the increase of transmission power. Simulations confirm that the proposed method can effectively reduce computation error, compared with state-of-the-art methods.

Blind skew compensation and digital combining with widely linear equalizer for multi-aperture coherent FSO communication.

Coherent digital combining technology using multiple small apertures has a lot of advantages over doing so with a single large aperture, including the effective mitigation of deep fading under strong turbulence, ease of scalability, and potential higher collected optical power. However, the in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) imbalance and I/Q skew induced by manufacturing imperfections of the coherent receiver front end, and the time mismatch caused by the unequal length of multi-aperture branches will induce a high OSNR penalty and reduce the digital combining efficiency, especially when the system scales to a larger number of apertures, such as massive aperture system. In this work, a complex-valued multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) 4N×2 widely linear (WL) equalizer is designed to combine multi-aperture signals. Using WL complex analysis, a general analytical model is derived and it is indicated that multi-aperture channel equalization and combining operations can be achieved simultaneously using a MIMO equalizer as long as appropriate tap coefficients are selected. Moreover, the feasibility of the proposed WL equalizer is verified by a 10-Gbps PM-QPSK modulation and a 20-Gbps PM-16QAM modulation four-aperture offline simulated turbulence experiment. The four-aperture combining efficiency of PM-QPSK exceeds 96% even at a single-aperture extremely low OSNR of -6 dB, and 80% for PM-16QAM at a single-aperture OSNR of 0 dB.

Modelling UX Ori star eclipses based on spectral observations with the Nordic Optical Telescope − I. RR Tau

ABSTRACT Based on observations obtained with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) we investigate the spectral variability of the Herbig Ae star RR Tau. This star belongs to the UX Ori family, characterized by very deep fadings caused by the screening of the star with opaque fragments (clouds) of the protoplanetary discs. At the moments of such minima one observes strong spectral variability due to the fact that the dust cloud occults, for an observer, not only the star but also a part of the region where the emission spectrum originates. We calculated a series of obscuration models to interpret the observed variability of the H α line parameters. We consider two main obscuration scenarios: (1) the dust screen rises vertically above the circumstellar disc, and (2) the screen intersects the line-of-sight moving azimuthally with the disc. In both cases, the model of the emission region consists of a compact magnetosphere and a magnetocentrifugal disc wind. Comparison with observations shows that the first scenario explains well the variability of the radiation flux, the equivalent width, as well as the asymmetry of the H α line during eclipses, while the second scenario explains them only partly. This permits us to suggest that in the case of RR Tau, the main causes of the eclipses are either a structured disc wind, or the charged dust lifted along the field lines of the poloidal component of the magnetic field of the circumstellar disc.

Diversity Enabled Low-Latency Wireless Communications With Hard Delay Constraints

The emerging next generation Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications (xURLLC) is expected to play a central role in supporting mission-critical mobile applications because it holds the promise of improving the Quality-of-Service (QoS) substantially. However, it is quite challenging to satisfy the hard delay constraint in harsh wireless environments due to sporadic deep fades, especially when the average power is strictly limited. In this paper, we aim at assuring hard delay constraints with the aid of frequency or spatial diversity techniques. To this end, we focus on both parallel and multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels, in which time domain power adaptation is exploited to provide just-in-time services (JITS). It is shown that the hard delay constraint can be satisfied with a finite average power when the frequency or spatial diversity gains are no less than two. By adopting the implicit function theorem, we reveal the relationship between the required average power, the delay constrained throughput, and the outage probability without power adaptation. Furthermore, by adopting Ferrari’s solution to fourth order algebraic equations, we show that hard delay constrained transmission is feasible even when the sub-channels in the frequency and spatial domains are highly but not fully correlated.

Performance Analysis of Slow Fluid Antenna Multiple Access in Noisy Channels Using Gauss-Laguerre and Gauss-Hermite Quadratures

Fluid antenna system (FAS) facilitating a position-switchable antenna, enables a mobile receiver to exploit the deep fade opportunity of its interference for multiple access. Slow fluid antenna multiple access ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">s</i> -FAMA) is such an emerging proposal that lets multiple users share the same time-frequency channel while each user adopts a fluid antenna to resolve the interference. Previous performance analysis is limited to the case when noise is neglected. In this letter, we remove this limitation and derive new closed-form expressions for the outage probability of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">s</i> -FAMA by using Gauss-Laguerre and Gauss-Hermite Quadratures. The analysis reveals the impact of noise on the outage probability for different numbers of users and ports in <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">s</i> -FAMA networks.

Characterization of Low-Latency Next-Generation eVTOL Communications: From Channel Modeling to Performance Evaluation

Next-generation wireless communication networks are expected to offer extremely high data rates supported by very low latency and radically new applications, which require a new wireless radio technology paradigm. However, it is crucial to assist the radio link over the fast varying and highly dynamic channel to satisfy the diverse requirements of next-generation wireless networks. Recently, communication via autonomous electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) has gained momentum, owing to its potential for cost-effective network deployment. It is considered one of the most promising technologies conceived to support smart radio terminals. However, to provide efficient and reliable communications between ground base stations and eVTOLs as well as between eVTOLs and other eVTOLs, realistic eVTOL channel models are indispensable. In this paper, we propose a nonstationary geometry-based stochastic channel model for eVTOL communication links. The proposed eVTOL channel model framework considers time-domain nonstationarity and arbitrary eVTOL trajectory and is sufficiently general to support versatile C bands. One of the critical challenges for eVTOL is the fast vertical takeoff and landing flight patterns affecting the regular propagation communication channel. Moreover, we present a new method for estimating the SNR over the non-stationary fast dynamic time-variant eVTOL channel by utilizing the sliding window adaptive filtering technique. Furthermore, we present an information–theoretic approach to characterize the end-to-end transmission delay over the eVTOL channel and prove that the optimal transmission scheme strongly depends upon the eVTOL link configuration. In addition, to analyze the occurrence of deep fade regions in eVTOL links, we analyze the outage probability, which is an important performance metric for wireless channels operating over dynamic fading channels, and make an important observation that the outage probability increases non-linearly with the eVTOL height. Furthermore, we consider the commercially available eVTOL specifications and data to validate the channel model and analyze the Doppler shift and latency for the exponential acceleration and exponential deceleration velocities profiles during the takeoff and landing operation. This paper provides a new and practical approach for the design, optimization, and performance evaluation of future eVTOL-assisted next-generation wireless communications.

Low-complexity IRS beamforming based on sphere decoding and tabu search

The real-time reconfiguration of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is one of the crucial, yet challenging tasks required to exploit the benefits of IRS. In this paper, we study an IRS-aided multiple-input single-output (MISO) wireless network, where a coarsely quantized (few resolution bits) IRS is reconfigured to help the point-to-point communication between a multi-antenna access point (AP) and a single-antenna user. Specifically, the transmit precoders at the AP and the reflecting discrete phase shifters at the IRS are jointly optimized to maximize the signal- to-noise ratio (SNR) at the user. The optimization is studied in two practical wireless propagation environments. First, we consider an environment where the direct AP-user link is in deep fade, which enables the relaxation of the optimization problem such that it can be optimally solved by the proposed sphere-decoder (SD) algorithm. Second, a normal propagation environment for all links is considered, wherein we propose the tabu search (TS) algorithm to solve the joint active and passive beamforming problem with low complexity. The proposed TS algorithm is shown to work well, even in deep-fade AP-user link scenarios. The presented numerical results confirm the validity of our analysis and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes over the benchmark schemes on different system setups and propagation environments.

Evaluation of ATSC 3.0 and 3GPP Rel-17 5G Broadcasting Systems for Mobile Handheld Applications

This paper provides performance evaluations of two state-of-the-art terrestrial broadcasting systems, ATSC 3.0 and 3GPP Rel-17 5G broadcast, in terms of physical layer capability, network deployment and operating costs. The physical layer performances are evaluated in the mobile broadcasting environment, considering practical implementations of the handheld terminals. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that ATSC 3.0 outperforms 5G broadcast, because of well-designed bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM) and time interleaver that can mitigate deep signal fades. The capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX) of the two systems are analyzed based on physical layer performances. The evaluations could be used for the planning of terrestrial broadcast services to mobile handheld devices.

Fluid Antenna Enabling Secret Communications

Recent researches have revealed that fluid antenna, a new position-switchable antenna technology, can make use of the spatial moments of deep fades of the interference signal occurred naturally due to multipath for multiple access. In this letter, this phenomenon is exploited in a physical layer security setup where a base station (BS) transmits an information-bearing signal to a legitimate user and an artificial noise (AN) signal to a potential eavesdropper while the user is equipped with a fluid antenna to overcome the AN signal. The proposed approach needs no effort from the base station (BS) to avoid the AN signal from harming the legitimate user. Trying to enhance the secrecy rate, we study the power allocation of the information-bearing and AN signals if the channel state information (CSI) is available at the BS. Both perfect and imperfect CSI scenarios are investigated. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed system, with a single fluid antenna with one radio-frequency (RF) chain at the user, achieves the secrecy rate that is achievable by the user utilizing maximal ratio combining (MRC) with many antennas instead, and is the only approach robust to CSI uncertainties of the eavesdropper, requiring no power allocation nor beamforming at the BS.

Effects of Fire Plumes From Pine Needles on Small-Scale Fading in Radiowave Propagation

In this article, radiowave fading caused by fire plumes due to the burning of heaps of pine needles is studied. Detailed characterization of the fire impact in terms of excess loss due to the yielded plumes at UHF frequencies, mainly in the L-band, when considering two different ignition sources, is also presented. The implemented small-scale fire scenario is composed of a 1 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 1$ </tex-math></inline-formula> m metallic grid covered with a 0.6 kg pine needle fuel bed that was placed right above a circular and linear gas burner to mimic an underbrush scenario. The propagation phenomena were evaluated through specific wideband measurements as the fire developed while intersecting the radio path at the antennas’ boresight. Results demonstrate changes in the propagation medium that is strongly influenced by the plume, which ultimately becomes (partly) ionized. Deep fades of up to 12 dB below median levels at specific frequencies during a short period of time, when the fire is more intense, were measured. We also obtained an overall median excess loss due to fire of up to 2 dB in the frequency range from 0.6 to 2 GHz in a relatively short path (below 1 m). A time-domain analysis allowed us to expand these results yielding fading values of the direct component of more than 3 dB in the presence of fire. Extending the findings presented in this article to a real-scale fire scenario, in which median excess loss of more than 20 dB and deeper nulls are ought to be expected, sets the rationale and motivation to pursue future work on the topic, with practical relevance to future mission-critical communication networks planning, such as, but not limited to, LTE Public-Safety and specific 5G use cases.

Deep Learning Enabled Slow Fluid Antenna Multiple Access

The increasing interest of fluid antenna systems is reinforced by an unprecedented way of achieving multiple access, by exploiting moments of deep fades in space. This phenomenon, referred to as fluid antenna multiple access (FAMA), allows the fluid antenna at each user to be switched to a location in space (i.e., port) where the sum-interference power collectively suffers from a deep fade, resulting in a decent signal reception without the need of complex signal processing. Nevertheless, selecting the best port is an arduous task, which requires a large number of channel observations to obtain the high performance gain. This letter aims to devise a low-complexity port selection scheme for FAMA where each user has a small number of port observations only. We assume slow FAMA ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$s$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -FAMA) so that the selected port remains unchanged until the channel conditions change. A deep learning approach is proposed to infer the signal-to-interference plus noise ratios (SINR) at all the available ports given only a small number of observations. The simulation results exhibit that the proposed scheme is able to attain significant reductions in outage probability, and improvements in multiplexing gain, from a relatively small number of available port observations, showing great potential for future multiple access technologies.

MOMO. VI. Multifrequency Radio Variability of the Blazar OJ 287 from 2015 to 2022, Absence of Predicted 2021 Precursor-flare Activity, and a New Binary Interpretation of the 2016/2017 Outburst

Based on our dedicated Swift monitoring program, MOMO, OJ 287 is one of the best-monitored blazars in the X-ray–UV–optical regime. Here, we report results from our accompanying, dense, multifrequency (1.4–44 GHz) radio monitoring of OJ 287 between 2015 and 2022 covering a broad range of activity states. Fermi γ-ray observations were added. We characterize the radio flux and spectral variability in detail, including discrete correlation function and other variability analyses, and discuss its connection with the multiwavelength emission. Deep fades of the radio and optical–UV fluxes are found to occur every 1–2 yr. Further, it is shown that a precursor flare of thermal bremsstrahlung predicted by one of the binary supermassive black hole (SMBH) models of OJ 287 was absent. We then focus on the nature of the extraordinary, nonthermal, 2016/2017 outburst that we initially discovered with Swift. We interpret it as the latest of the famous optical double-peaked outbursts of OJ 287, favoring binary scenarios that do not require a highly precessing secondary SMBH.

Improving mobile communications with antennas that map the channel and move to local maxima

AbstractA technique is proposed that improves wireless communication channels in fading environments. The device creates a map of channel measurements. The device then moves its antenna to positions of the previously measured maximum within its reach. Proof‐of‐concept measurements were performed for smartphone‐sized devices in an office environment. A quarter‐wavelength monopole antenna for the 2.4 GHz frequency band successfully kept the channel at local maxima. The results show that small antenna movements over half of a wavelength are sufficient to keep the channel in local maxima, to avoid deep fading notches, and to improve channels over state‐of‐the‐art antennas that move with their devices. A channel model for the wireless communication channel of mobile devices with channel maximum antennas is proposed based on the measurement results.

COMPARISON OF MEASURED SLANT PATH ATTENUATION AT 10.982 GHZ WITH LARGE-SCALE PREDICTION MODELS IN A TROPICAL CLIMATE

Rain-induced attenuation above 10 GHz can be severe at heavy rain rates resulting in deep fading, which can negatively impact the quality of receive signal level at the Earth station receiver. The dearth of direct measurement data in most of the tropical and equatorial climates has motivated the campaign for collection of rain attenuation data on slant paths in these regions. This is mainly due to a huge receiver margin required for such measurement, and which is very difficult to obtain by using a spectrum analyzer. The measurement results of rain rates and rain-induced attenuation in vertically polarized signals propagating at 10.982 GHz in a tropical Malaysian climate are presented in this study. The measured attenuation is compared with large-scale prediction models. As shown in the statistically-tested results, the Bryant model yields the best overall fit, while the Crane model yields the worst overall fit. The results show that the models have relatively good prediction capabilities in the Malaysian tropical climate; however, their prediction errors still need to be minimized. Therefore, in this study, a correction factor is proposed to enhance their predictions.

IRS-Aided Wireless Communication: From Physics to Channel Modeling and Characterization

Intelligent reflecting surface has recently emerged as a cost-effective solution to overcome the deep fading and uncontrollable wireless environment. This leads to a need for studies on the wireless channels of IRS-aided wireless communication (IRSaWC). This paper proposes a novel channel modelling method for the IRSaWC by exploiting the physics characteristic of the electromagnetic (EM) field on the IRS and the modified Saleh-Valenzuela (SV) model. Firstly, the reflection on a single reflecting tile (RT) of the IRS is investigated in the presence of a misalignment between the RT’s configured incident angle and the actual incident angle, and the RT’s phase distortion. Then, the path loss and phase shift models for the reflected field are developed. Extending our study to the multiple-RT scenario and utilizing the modified SV model, the channel characteristic for the IRSaWC is determined. Our analysis shows that the information signal at the receiver experiences a Rice fading with controllable parameters. Theoretical results for the path loss, the channel’s parameters, and the received distortion power are derived; moreover, an approximate distribution for the combined signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for IRS-aided multiple-antenna wireless systems (IRSaMAWSs) has been investigated with the aim of conducting further studies on theoretical performance for IRSaMAWSs