Real-Time Over-the-Air Emulation of Rician Fading Channels for Mobile Antenna Testing

As the ubiquity of 5G technology permeates various domains, coupled with the introduction of new carrier frequencies under the New Radio (NR) framework, devices employing this advanced technology require stringent and repeatable operational conformance tests. Those tests are essential to ascertain the AUT performance under realistic deployment scenarios, thereby ensuring reliability. Hence emulating realistic channel characteristics is fundamental to reach a reliable evaluation of radio components. Considering small-scale fading phenomena is imperative in evaluating the operational integrity of radio devices, as it pervades everything from vehicular communications to the mobility of user equipment. This work demonstrates implementing and validating the operation of a Rician fading channel emulator which can be integrated in an over-the-air antenna testbed. It provides a real-time cost-effective solution using off-the-shelf software defined radios (SDR). The paper provides an overview on the hardware setup and the software implementation of the Rician fading emulator. The setup is tested in an anechoic chamber and comparative analysis showed a robust correlation between the empirical data and theoretical plots of the Rician fading magnitude statistics.