Description
A wireless channel emulator is test equipment designed to emulate a wireless channel. Wireless channel emulators allow wireless communication system developers to perform tests in a lab environment that were traditionally performed in the field. The major issue with existing wireless channel emulators is that existing wireless channel emulators cost a significant amount of money. This issue may be attributed to the large computational workload of existing wireless channel emulators. This thesis presents a description of a wireless channel emulator. The bulk of the description is focused on the design and software implementation of a wireless channel emulator’s processing engine. The processing engine performs the computations associated with wireless channel impairment emulation. The emulation of four different channel impairments is discussed: propagation delay, attenuation, fading and multipath. Both newly- developed and existing software implementations that emulate different wireless channel impairments are compared. The software implementation of a processing engine software is comprised of the software implementations for emulating different wireless channel impairments. Both newly developed and existing processing engine software implementations are presented. The computational workload of both processing engines is determined by calculating the number of multiplications required to produce one processing engine output sample. For wireless channels with at least 3 paths, this thesis finds the newly-developed processing engine software implementation to require a smaller number of multiplications to produce one output sample than the existing processing engine. In addition, this thesis finds the reduction in the number of multiplications between the newly-developed and existing processing engines to increase as the number of paths increases. The material presented in this thesis can be used to create a low-cost wireless channel emulator. A low-cost wireless channel emulator allows wireless communication systems to be developed more cost effectively. In addition, a low-cost wireless channel emulator would allow wireless communication system developers from smaller companies and universities to afford a wireless channel emulator. Both advantages could potentially increase wireless communication system innovation.
