ABSTRACT
Radio noise and channel measurements are fundamental to channel characterisation and system design. While techniques using commercial off the shelf such as vector network analysers (VNAs) offer a ready to use solution they tend to suffer from a slow repetition rate that does not permit capturing the dynamic behaviour of the channel. To overcome the limitations of vector network analysers custom designed radio channel sounders are developed. Radio channel physical modelling is based on the application of a sound physical theory to a proper representation of the environment. The model is statistical if the environment is simply described through few, general parameters; assuming the outdoor urban channel as a reference case, such parameters may be the mean buildings height, and so on. Full-wave models can be classified as being frequency domain or time domain depending on the form of Maxwell’s equations used. There are several integral equation formulations of scattering problems, but in each case the principle is the same.
