The effect of mobile velocity on a communication system operating over multipath fading channels

We present an analytical model to determine the probability of error for a communication system as a function of the mobile velocity. We investigate the performance of a system model with power control and error control coding. In a multipath fading environment, the rate of fading is highly dependent on the velocity of the mobile. To incorporate the effect of velocity, we apply a Markovian model to the channel that captures the correlation between successive bits. We then develop an error recursion that accounts for the power control and the channel coding. At low speeds, we find that effective power control is crucial to maintain low error rates. At higher speeds where power control is ineffective, error control coding is necessary to mitigate the channel impairments. For more intermediate speeds, the model gives the worst performance because neither power control nor error control coding can counteract the effects of the channel.