Abstract

We present a statistical model for the dynamics of the envelope of the received signal in narrowband urban fixed wireless links, with applications to the performance evaluation of diversity receivers. The model is based on a straightforward analytical treatment based on simplifying assumptions. The assumptions are validated by an extensive empirical study of a broad range of urban settings representative of realistic deployment scenarios for fixed wireless service. The results are useful for system designers and for the efficient selection of error control mechanisms that need to adjust to the dynamics of the propagation channel. We find that, in practice, the autocovariances of the combiner branch input signals are similar and also similar to the autocovariance of the output of the diversity combiners. © 2007 IEEE.