Finite-State Markov Modeling for High-Speed Railway Fading Channels

Developing an accurate and mathematically tractable high-speed railway (HSR) channel model is a key issue to provide reliable, cost-effective wireless services for the HSR operators and users. Although finite-state Markov chain (FSMC) has been extensively investigated to describe fading channels, most of FSMC channel models are designed based on the first-order Markov chain, which are no longer valid when the transceivers operate in high mobility scenarios, specially in HSR communications. In this letter, an advanced FSMC channel model for HSR is proposed, which incorporates the impacts of moving speed on the temporal channel statistical characteristic. The closed-form expressions of state transition probabilities between channel states are derived. The accuracy of the proposed FSMC channel model is validated via extensive measurements conducted on the Zhengzhou-Xi’an HSR line in China.