On the Correlation and Ergodic Properties of the Squared Envelope of SOC Rayleigh Fading Channel Simulators

In this paper, we investigate the correlation and ergodic properties of the squared envelope of a class of autocorrelation-ergodic (AE) sum-of-cisoids (SOC) simulation models for mobile Rayleigh fading channels. Novel closed-form expressions are presented for both the ensemble and the time autocorrelation functions (ACFs) of the SOC simulation model’s squared envelope. These expressions have been derived by assuming that the SOC model’s inphase and quadrature (IQ) components have arbitrary autocorrelation and cross-correlation properties. This consideration makes the results herein presented more general than those given previously in other papers, where it is assumed that the IQ components of the simulation model are strictly uncorrelated. We show that under certain conditions, the squared envelope of the SOCmodel is an AE random process. In addition, we evaluate the performance of three fundamental methods for the computation of the model parameters—namely the generalized method of equal areas, the Lp-norm method, and the Riemann sum method—regarding their accuracy for emulating the squared envelope ACF of a reference narrowband Rayleigh fading channel model. The obtained results are important to design efficient simulators for the performance analysis of systems and algorithms sensitive to the correlation properties of the channel’s squared envelope, such as speed estimators and handover mechanisms.