Frequency domain multipath fading channel simulator integrated with OFDM transmitter for E-UTRAN baseband traffic generator

The purpose of the study is to develop an efficient 3GPP compliant method to simulate multiple independent fading radio channels in software defined Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-EUTRAN) traffic generator. In this paper, frequency domain representation of commonly accepted Tapped Delay Line (TDL) model is discussed and three transformation algorithms are evaluated. The effects of multipath fading channel are applied to the signal at the level of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing¹ (OFDM) transmitter prior to IFFT stage. Models 0 and 1 are based on Digital Fourier Transform (DFT) of TDL with and without consideration of Intercarrier Interference (ICI) phenomenon. Model 2 is the novel method that extends quasi-stationary model with low-cost linear approximation of ICI applied directly in frequency domain in order to gain overall accuracy with small computational effort. When limiting the ICI term to 16 neighboring subcarriers, Model 2 exhibits 12 dB SNR improvement comparing to stationary model and offers execution time advantage comparing to TDL model when the number of terminals sharing radio resources is high.