Empirical characterization of fading effects due to on-axis rotation of an embedded antenna

This study presents an empirical investigation of the characteristics of the wireless signal received by an antenna that undergoes on-axis rotation in a line of sight indoor environment. The measured signal fading reaches up to 14 dB from the nominal position at certain antenna orientations due to polarization misalignment. Both the first order and second order statistics of the received signal are determined and compared to selected candidate distributions. The model is selected through goodness-of-fit statistics and by using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). Based on the AIC model ranking and the second order statistics, the Rice distribution best describes the channel fading due to on-axis rotation.