The wireless channel point to point radio communications

Summary: Propagation fundamentals. Best case scenario: free-space and the Friis equation. Large-scale phenomena: reflection, diffraction and scattering. Small-scale phenomena: multipath resulting in time-, space and frequency-selective fading effects. Fading models and diversity methods. Uniqueness of wireless sensor application in comparison to mobile communication systems. Diversity methods. Link budgets.

Example: Using RSSI to monitor channel performance - WSSW.

Objectives:

• Understand the fundamentals associated with free-space propagation loss. Links to traveling electromagnetic waves.
• Be able to define key sources of propagation effects both and the large- and small-scale. Leverages probability and statistics.
• Be able to define basic diversity schemes to mitigate small-scale effects.
• Understand key differences between the channel for mobile communication systems and that for wireless sensor networks.
• Be able to develop a link budget for a wireless sensor application including margins for large- and small-scale propagation effects.
• Links to antenna and radio performance.

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