Empirical Characterization and Modeling of the Propagation Channel Inside the VIRC

Over-the-air (OTA) testing and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) measurements are widely performed in classical reverberation chambers. A less-known reverberation chamber, yet a considerably efficient environment for generating multipath conditions, is the vibrating intrinsic reverberation chamber (VIRC). This article thoroughly investigates the radio propagation channel inside the VIRC. The specific channels studied are narrowband single-input single-output (SISO) systems operating in the frequency range from 670–2740 MHz. A relevant application is OTA testing wireless baseband algorithms or modems for wireless sensor networks, specifically low-power wide-area networks such as Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT), Long Range (LoRa) and Ultra-Narrowband (UNB). The focus is on the first- and second-order temporal and spectral channel characteristics: coherence time, Doppler spectrum, Doppler spread, frequency autocovariance function, coherence bandwidth, rejection rate of chi-squared goodness-of-fit test for Rician distribution, Rician $K$ -factor, and channel gain. Besides the impact of the frequency of operation, the investigation considers the effect of the rotational speed of the VIRC motors, two loading conditions, on the channel characteristics. An analysis of the measurement results shows that the stirring efficiency degrades while the coherence time increases at slow rotational speeds, with loading, and/or at low frequencies. Moreover, empirical models closely fitting the behavior of various investigated characteristics are proposed, for which we provide foundational physical interpretations. A further investigation is carried out to demonstrate the generality and briefly illustrate the potential usability of these models for both EMC and OTA testing.