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UC San Diego Previously Published Works
Title
Performance of polarization diversity in correlated Nakagami-m fading channels
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7402q7j3
Journal
IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 55(1)
ISSN
0018-9545
Authors
Jootar, J
Diouris, J F
Zeidler, J R
Publication Date
2006
Peer reviewed
Abstract—This paper analyzes the performance of systems with One limitation of polarization diversity is an intrinsic power
dual-polarized antennas in correlated Nakagami-m fading chan- imbalance. The nature of electromagnetic wave propagation dic-
nels as a function of envelope correlation and cross-polarization tates that the polarization orthogonal to the obstacle is attenuated
discrimination by means of the characteristic function of the in-
stantaneous post-maximal ratio combining (MRC) signal-to-noise more than the polarization parallel to the obstacle [1], [2]. Con-
ratio (SNR). Systems of interest include systems with receive polar- sidering that buildings are typical obstacles in wireless channels,
ization diversity and systems with transmit and receive polarization the horizontal polarization (HPol) is expected to be attenuated
diversity employing Alamouti space-time code. The expressions for more that the vertical polarization (VPol). This asymmetrical
the average symbol error probability as a function of SNR assum- attenuation can lead to a significant power imbalance, which
ing no power control, and the expressions for the average required
transmit power to achieve the constant desired post-MRC SNR as- will further degrade the system performance [1], [2], [4], [5].
suming perfect fast power control, are derived. Finally, a compar- The characteristics of polarization diversity have been de-
ison between analytical and simulation results is used to validate scribed by envelope correlation (ρenv ) and cross-polarization
the analysis. discrimination (XPD or χ). The envelope correlation represents
Index Terms—Fading, maximal radio combining (MRC), polar- the correlation between the polarizations. The XPD represents
ization diversity, power control, transmit diversity. the power imbalance between the polarizations and is defined
as the ratio between the copolarized signal power and the cross-
polarized signal power. Given that the transmitted signal is verti-
I. INTRODUCTION
cally polarized, the XPD is the ratio between the average signal
T IS well known that increasing the number of antennas in a
I wireless communication system can effectively improve the
system performance. However, the cost of increasing the spatial
power received from the VPol and the average signal power
received from the HPol. These parameters strongly depend on
the specific channel characteristics, and extensive field mea-
dimensions at the base station and the handsets has been an surements have been conducted to determine realistic values of
impediment to the deployment of spatial diversity in practical ρenv and χ. Experimental data have shown that the envelope
systems. Polarization diversity provides an alternative means of correlation between the VPol and the HPol at the receiver is
increasing the diversity order with little increase in the spatial generally less than 0.2 [2]–[6]. Furthermore, the XPD in the
dimensions. The diversity is produced by the depolarization of urban environment, given that a vertically polarized signal is
the transmitted signal by reflection, diffraction, and scattering transmitted, is normally between 1 and 10 dB, with an average
in the channel [1], [2]. Without polarization receive diversity, of 6 dB [2], [4], [5]. The XPD in the rural environment is usu-
the signal energy residing in the polarization orthogonal to the ally more than 10 dB [2] due to the lack of obstacles that couple
polarization of the receive antenna cannot be utilized. Another the signal from the VPol into the HPol. The values of ρenv and
advantage of polarization diversity is the ability to recover from XPD measured from urban environments will be used as an ex-
a polarization mismatch, which occurs when the polarization ample of realistic channel characteristics. Note that this system
of the transmit antenna and the receive antenna are different. model may not represent some practical implementations, such
In wireless communication systems where antennas at the mo- as the uplink of cellular systems, where the transmit antenna
bile units are randomly oriented, polarization receive diversity is not vertically oriented, or a system with cross-polarization
collects signal energy from multiple polarizations, allowing im- antennas, which consists of ±45◦ slanted antennas. However,
proved performance in a spatially compact array [3]. performance gain of these systems can be obtained by replacing
ρenv and χ used in this analysis with those of the system under
Manuscript received February 19, 2004. The material in this paper was pre- interest.
sented in part at the IEEE Globecom Conference, San Francisco, CA, December, Previous results which quantify various aspects of the perfor-
2003. This work was supported by Core Grant 02-10109 sponsored by Ericsson mance gains of polarization diversity are discussed in [1]–[4]
and the U.S. Army Research Office under Multi-University Research Initiative
(MURI) Grant W911NF-04-1-0224. The review of this paper was coordinated and [11]. In [2], the gain is defined as the increase in the mea-
by A. Annamalai. sured combined signal power from the VPol and the HPol, com-
J. Jootar and J. R. Zeidler are with the Department of Electrical and Computer pared to the VPol only, corresponding to a certain percentile of
Engineering, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0407
USA (e-mail: jjootar@ucsd.edu; zeidler@ece.ucsd.edu). the power. Lotse et al. used simulations based on the XPD and
J.-F. Diouris is with Institut de Recherche en Communication et Cyberné the envelope correlation measurement to find the performance
tique de Nates, Ecole Polytechnique de l’université de Nantes, BP 50609, gain [4]. Turkmani et al. used measured fading coefficients to
44306 Nantes Cedex 03, France (e-mail: jean-francois.diouris@polytech.univ-
nantes.fr). find the gain as a function of XPD and envelope correlation for
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TVT.2005.861163 selection, equal gain, and maximal ratio combining techniques
M
Eb |αk |2
ϕ= = Eb γ
ηo
k =1
Fig. 2. Block diagram for system C.
M
|αk |2
where γ = (3)
ηo root of the envelope correlation [12]. Due to lack of experimen-
k =1
tal result on polarization characteristics of Nakagami-m fading
The characteristic function of γ for an M -branch MRC di- channels, we will assume that this approximation is valid for
versity receiver in Nakagami-m distribution channels [9] is Nakagami-m fading channels as well.
γ̄ −m
Using the results from (6a)–(6c), the correlation matrix for
Φγ (s) = IM − js Λ (4) system A and system B can be obtained as
m
where IM is an M -by-M identity matrix; γ̄ is the mean of γ; m ρ env
1 χ
is the Nakagami-m distribution parameter, where the channels ΛA = ρ (7)
1
with m = (1/2), 1, and ∞ corresponds to the one-sided Gaus-
env
χ χ
sian channel, the Rayleigh channel, and the AWGN channel,
ρ env
respectively; Λ is an M -by-M correlation matrix; and |A| is the 1 χ 0 0
determinant of matrix A. ρ env 1
0 0
ΛB = .
χ χ
The correlation matrix Λ, described in [9], can be summarized
(8)
ρ env
as follows: 0 0 1
χ
Λk l E[ak ak ] = E[ak al ] + jE[ak bl ] = Λ∗lk E[al al ]
ρ env 1
(5a) 0 0 χ χ
symbol can be recovered completely. The signals after MRC A. No Power Control
becomes
The signal power in this mode does not change with time. The
performance is measured by the average symbol error probabil-
Eb
y1 = s1 (|αV V |2 + |αV H |2 + |αH V |2 + |αH H |2 ) + ñ1 ity corresponding to the SNR. From [9], the average symbol
2 error probability of a coherent BPSK system is given by
(10a) π −m
1 2
ϕ̄
Eb P̄e = IM + 2 Λ dν (13)
y2 = s2 (|αV V |2 + |αV H |2 + |αH V |2 + |αH H |2 ) + ñ2 π 0 m sin ν
2 where IM , m, and Λ are as previously defined, and ϕ̄ is the
(10b) expectation of ϕ and is equal to Eb γ̄ for system A, B and is
equal to Eb γ̄/2 for system C.
where ñ1 and ñ2 represent the noise after com- Since the symbol error which dominates the system perfor-
bining, and E[|ñ1 |2 ] = E[|ñ2 |2 ] = 2σ 2 (|αV V |2 + |αV H |2 + mance at high SNR is the error between the transmitted sym-
|αH V |2 + |αH H |2 ). bol and its nearest neighbors, the average symbol error can be
The post-MRC SNR is approximated by considering only the nearest neighbor error
events [13]
Eb Eb γ
ϕC = (|αV V |2 + |αV H |2 + |αH V |2 + |αH H |2 ) = .
N sym
2ηo 2 dmin (Si )
P̄e ≈ P r(Si )Ne (Si )Q (14)
(11) i=1
2σ
where Nsym is the number of symbols in the constellation,
The characteristic function of γ can also be represented with P r(Si ) is the probability of the symbol Si being transmit-
the characteristic function shown in (4). The correlation matrix ted, Ne (Si ) is the number of the nearest neighbors of symbol
for system C can be written as Si , dmin (Si ) is the minimum distance to the nearest neighbors
of symbol Si , and σn2 is the noise variance [13]. Therefore, the
t1 δ r1
1 χ1 χ2 0 average symbol error probability of a coherent QPSK system,
t 1 δ r2 assuming equally likely transmit symbols, can be approximated
χ11 0
ΛC = as
χ1 χ1
δ r1 (12)
χ2 δ t2
π −m
0 δ 2 2
ϕ̄
χ2
χ2 P̄e ≈ IM + Λ dν. (15)
π 0 2
0 δ r2
δ t2
δ m sin ν
χ1 χ2
The symbol error probability of systems A, B, and C can be
where t1 , t2 , r1 , and r2 are the envelope correlation be- found by substituting Λ with the correlation matrix shown in
tween {αV V and αV H }, {αH V αH H }, {αV V and αH V }, and (7), (8), and (12). The expressions for the average symbol error
{αV H and αH H }, respectively. χ1 is the ratio between the sig- probability can be simplified as
nal power received from the VPol receive antenna and the signal π
−m
N̄e 2 ϕ̄ξ ϕ̄2 δ
power received from the HPol receive antenna, given that the P̄e,A ≈ 1+ − 2 4 dν
π 0 m sin2 ν m sin ν
VPol signal is transmitted. χ2 is the ratio between the signal
power received from the HPol receive antenna and the signal (16a)
power received from the VPol receive antenna, given that the π
−2m
N̄e 2 ϕ̄ξ ϕ̄2 δ
HPol signal is transmitted. δ is the ratio between the signal power P̄e,B ≈ 1+ − dν
received from the HPol antenna, given the HPol signal is trans-
π 0 m sin2 ν m2 sin4 ν
mitted and the signal power received from the VPol antenna, (16b)
given the VPol signal, is transmitted. π 4
−m
N̄e 2 ϕ̄λi
Experimental data have shown that the correlation between P̄e,C ≈ 1+ dν (16c)
fading coefficients that originate from different transmit an- π 0 i=1
2m sin2 ν
tennas and arrive at different antennas ({αV V and αH H } or
where δ = p envχ −1 , ξ = 1 + χ1 , and N̄e is the average number of
{αV H and αH V }) are very small [6]. With the assumption
nearest neighbors of the constellation (one for BPSK and two
that these values are negligible, we can approximate the anti-
for QPSK). Note that the approximations in (16a)–(16c) become
diagonal elements of ΛC to be zero.
exact for the BPSK case.
Note that with 0 ≤ t1 , t2 , r1 , r2 ≤ 1, and χ1 , χ2 ≥ 1, ΛC is
positive semi-definite.
B. Perfect Fast Power Control
When the transmitter and the receiver have perfect knowledge
III. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
of the channel state information, the transmitter can perfectly
This paper focuses on two power control scenarios: no power cancel the effect of fading by controlling the transmit signal
control and perfect fast power control. power such that a constant desired post-MRC SNR (ϕtarget ) is
132 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 55, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
achieved at the receiver. This process is referred to as the perfect where K(x, y) = yi=1 (2x − 2i − 1); 4i=1 1+xλ
ki
= 4i=1
fast power control algorithm. i
ϕ
target
ln ξξ +ω , when m = 1
γ̄ ω
−ω
m −2
mξ(2δ)i (m − 2 − i)!K(m, i)
mξ
E[Eb ] = ϕ
target (m − 1)ω
+
(m − 1)!ω 2i+2 (20)
2
, otherwise
γ̄ i=1
m(2δ)m −1
K(m, m − 1) ξ +ω
+ (m −1)!ω 2m −1 ln ξ −ω
It can be seen from Fig. 6 that when χ is large and ρenv is modulation and compare the results with the results from [11],
equal to one, the polarization diversity is no longer efficient, and which was derived using the Chernoff bound approach, and with
the system is equivalent to a perfect two-branch space diversity our simulation results. The extended analysis uses the nearest
system (or the reference system). The performance gain in a neighbors approximation [13], and the expression for the bit
realistic channel can be estimated by using the measurement error probability corresponding to 16-QAM can be expressed as
data from the urban environment. The data show that the en-
π 4
−1
velope correlation is generally less than 0.2 and the XPD has 3 2 γ̃λi
an average of 6 dB. It can be deduced from Figs. 5 and 6 that P̄e,C ,16QAM ≈ 1+ dν (25)
π 0 i=1 10 · 2 sin2 ν
the loss from using system A compared to the reference system
is 3–3.4 dB for Rayleigh fading channels, and 2.9–3.1 dB for where γ̃ is the SNR as defined in [11], three is the number of the
Nakagami-m fading channels with m = 2, and the gain from average nearest neighbors, and ten is the scaling factor used to
using system B compared to the reference system is 4–4.3 dB maintain the same average transmit power between the QPSK
for Rayleigh fading channels and 2.1–2.3 dB for Nakagami-m and 16-QAM.
fading channels with m = 2. The comparison between √(25), the √ result from [11], and
√ √
In order to appreciate the simplicity and the accuracy of the the simulation result when t1 = t2 = 0.7, r1 = r2 =
analysis presented in this paper, we extend (16c) to 16-QAM 0.1, χ1 = χ2 = 5, and δ = 1 is shown in Fig. 7. It is clear that
134 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 55, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
Fig. 7. Comparison between the simulation result, the analytical result from
[11] and the analytical result from (25) for Rayleigh fading channels. Fig. 9. Performance gain of system B compared to the reference system (per-
fect fast power control).
Fig. 10. Gain from using system B compared to system A when ρenv = 0.2
Fig. 8. Performance gain of system A compared to the reference system (per- and χ = 6 dB as a function of m (Nakagami-m distribution parameter).
fect fast power control).
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“An experimental evaluation of the performance of two-branch space and
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[4] F. Lotse, J.-E. Berg, U. Forssen, and P. Idahl, “Base station polarization
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[5] W. C. Y. Lee and Y. S. Yeh, “Polarization diversity system for mobile
Fig. 11 shows the gain of system C under this particular channel radio,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-26, pp. 912–923, Oct. 1972.
characteristic. The 0-dB line determines the channel condition [6] T. Neubauer and P. C. F. Eggers, “Simultaneous characterization of polar-
where system C performs as well as the reference system, and ization matrix components in pico cells,” in Proc. IEEE Vehicular Tech-
nology Conf., vol. 3, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1999, pp. 1361–1365.
the area on the left side of the 0 dB line represents the scenario [7] J. Jootar and J. R. Zeidler, “Performance analysis of polarization receive
wherein system C outperforms the reference system. It is inter- diversity in correlated Rayleigh fading channels,” in Proc. IEEE Globe-
esting to point out that even though system C needs only slightly com’03 Conf., San Francisco, CA, Dec. 2003, pp. 774–778.
[8] M. Nakagami, “The m-distribution, a general formula of intensity distri-
more space than a SISO system, under this particular channel bution of rapid fading,” in Statistical Methods in Radio Wave Propagation,
characteristic, this compact system can achieve similar (or even W. G. Hoffmann, Ed. New York: Pergamon, 1960.
better) performance compared to the perfect two-branch receive [9] J. Luo, J. R. Zeidler, and S. McLaughlin, “Performance analysis of com-
pact antenna arrays with MRC in correlated Nakagami fading channels,”
diversity system by use of space-time code and polarization IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 267–277, Jan. 2001.
receive diversity. We can also see from Fig. 11 that as r1 , r2 in- [10] S. M. Alamouti, “A simple transmit diversity technique for wireless com-
creases (the channel gets worse), the 0-dB line moves to the left, munications,” IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 16, no. 10, pp. 1451–1458,
Oct. 1998.
and the area where system C outperforms the reference system [11] R. Nabar, H. Bolcskei, V. Erceg, D. Gesbert, and A. J. Paulraj, “Perfor-
gets smaller. mance of multiantenna signaling techniques in the presence of polarization
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V. CONCLUSION [12] M. Schwartz, W. R. Bennet, and S. Stein, Communication Systems and
Techniques. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966.
It has been shown that polarization diversity systems can pro- [13] J. M. Cioffi, Class reader for EE379A-Digital Communication: Signal
vide significant performance enhancements either in lieu of, or Processing. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ, Jan. 2005.
in combination with, spatial diversity systems, despite the in-
herent power imbalance between polarizations. We have derived
the relationship between the polarization characteristic, which
is represented by the envelope correlation and the power imbal-
ance, and the system performance in correlated Nakagami-m
fading channels with the MRC diversity receiver. More specif-
ically, the average symbol error probability as a function of
SNR and the polarization characteristic (assuming no power Jittra Jootar (S’02) received the B.S. degree in elec-
trical engineering from Chulalongkorn University,
control), and the average transmit power as a function of post- Bangkok, Thailand, in 1997 and the M.S. degree
MRC SNR and the polarization characteristic (assuming perfect in electrical engineering from Stanford University,
fast power control), are derived. Stanford, CA, in 1999. Since 2002, she has been
working toward the Ph.D. degree at the Department
We have shown that the performance of polarization diversity of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University
in a realistic channel can easily be obtained by substituting the of California at San Diego, La Jolla.
envelope correlation and the cross-polarization discrimination From 1999 to 2002, she was with QUALCOMM
Inc., San Diego, CA, where she worked on Bluetooth
measured from the actual channel into the analytical expressions and WCDMA development. Her research interests
provided. The power imbalance does limit system performance, include modulation and coding for mobile communication systems.
136 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 55, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
Jean-Francois Diouris (M’92) received the Ph.D. He received a Frederick Ellersick award from the IEEE Communications So-
degree in electrical engineering from the University ciety at the IEEE Military Communications Conference in 1995, the Navy
of Rennes I, Rennes, France, in 1991. Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1991, and the Lauritsen–Bennett Award
From 1992 to 1999, he was an Assistant Professor for Achievement in Science from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center
with IRESTE, University of Nantes, Nantes, France. in 2000. He was an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL
He is currently a Professor with Polytech’Nantes, PROCESSING and a member of the technical committee on Underwater Acoustic
University of Nantes. His current research interests Signal Processing for the IEEE Signal Processing Society.
include digital communications, antenna processing,
and software radio.