Generation of correlated Rayleigh fading channels for accurate simulation of promising wireless communication systems

In this paper, a generalized method is proposed for the accurate simulation of equal/unequal power correlated Rayleigh fading channels to overcome the shortcomings of existing methods. Spatial and spectral correlations are also considered in this technique for different transmission conditions. It employs successive coloring for the inphase and quadrature components of successive signals using real correlation vector of successive signal envelopes rather than complex covariance matrix of the Gaussian signals which is utilized in conventional methods. Any number of fading signals with any desired correlations of successive envelope pairs in the interval [0, 1] can be generated with high accuracy. Moreover, factorization of the desired covariance matrix is avoided to overcome the shortcomings and high computational complexity of conventional methods. Extensive simulations of different representative scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique. The simplicity and accuracy of this method will help the researchers to study and simulate the impact of fading correlation on the performance evaluation of various multi-antenna and multicarrier communication systems. Moreover, it enables the engineers for efficient design and deployment of new schemes for feasible wireless applications. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.