Error stream acquisition for DECT channel characterization

The characterization of the indoor wireless channel is a difficult task owing to the wide variability of indoor environments. It is neccessary to deal with experimental measurements, oriented to determine channel properties related to a specific environment. A flexible set-up is needed to obtain reliable results. In the paper a measurement set-up is presented to acquire digital error streams on a DECT channel (1.152 Mbit/s). Such data are useful in digital wireless system analysis and projects, fitted to a specific environment. The set-up uses two DECT communication testers to modulate the carrier with an externally generated sequence and to demodulate the radio signal. The error stream is obtained by aligning and comparing the demodulator output and the transmitted sequence, and, then, it is stored into the hard disk of a personal computer. A software-driven acquisition board has been built for this purpose. As an example, some channel properties based on data are evaluated, showing a good agreement with theoretical models.