Fading Modeling in Maritime Container Terminal Environments

In this paper, an analytical model for slow and fast fading effects in maritime container terminals is derived, from fitting distributions to the results of measurements performed in an actual operational environment. The proposed model is composed of a set of equations, enabling to evaluate fading statistical distribution parameters for different system and environments conditions, as a function of frequency, base station antenna height, and average height of container stacks in a deepwater container terminal. The model's coefficients were obtained from a multivariate linear regression of the fitted distributions parameters, allowing to evaluate the different statistical distribution parameters with a negligible mean error and a standard deviation of the error less than 0.65 dB. It is observed that a good fitting is obtained for slow fading with the Lognormal Distribution, the standard deviation ranging in [1.40, 4.81] dB, while fast fading is well modeled by the Nakagami Distribution with the standard deviation ranging in [0.43, 1.26]. Hence, in a conservative perspective, values of 5 and 1.3 dB are proposed to characterize slow and fast fading, respectively.