Eigen-analysis of UWB channel on the basis of information theoretic criteria

Underground mine galleries can be considered as complex transmission lines where multipath, attenuation, reflection, diffraction and scattering effects are dominants. However, some companies have started to deploy modern wireless system networks in mine galleries with the objective of increasing safety and productivity. In the last decade, ultra-wideband (UWB) technology has gained much interest for its application to wireless communications. This paper reports on experimental results of UWB channel propagation in an underground mine. Eigen-decomposition and subspace-based statistical signal processing on the autocorrelation matrix of the channel impulse response are used. We apply information theoretic criteria to estimate the number of significant eigenvalues. This result is then used to calculate the RMS delay spread of the channel.