Filter-Based Fading Channel Modeling

A channel simulator is an essential component in the development and accurate performance evaluation of wireless systems. A key technique for producing statistically accurate fading variates is to shape the flat spectrum of Gaussian variates using digital filters. This paper addresses various challenges when designing real and complex spectrum shaping filters with quantized coefficients for efficient realization of both isotropic and nonisotropic fading channels. An iterative algorithm for designing stable complex infinite impulse response (IIR) filters with fixed-point coefficients is presented. The performance of the proposed filter design algorithm is verified with 16-bit fixed-point simulations of two example fading filters.