Analysis of UWB communication over IEEE 802.15.3a channel by superseding lognormal shadowing by Mixture of Gamma distributions

Abstract In this paper, we calculate the bit error rate (BER) of the ultra-wide band (UWB) wireless communication system over IEEE 802.15.3a channel model by superseding the lognormal (LN) shadow fading distribution to the Mixture of Gamma (MG) distributions. In general, shadow fading is the effect of random fluctuation of received signal power around the mean path loss and it is modeled as LN distribution. In this work, we approximate the LN shadow fading distribution to the MG distributions, because of intractable, indefinite mathematical expression of the characteristic function (CF) and moment generating function (MGF) of the LN distribution, which are required to evaluate BER of the UWB communication system. To estimate the approximate MG distributions parameters, we use rth moment algorithm with least square non-linear curve fitting criteria. This work employs the L-fingers RAKE receiver which is needed to collect the total energy at the receiver in the UWB system. The results show that 5-MG distributions is the good fit for LN shadow fading distribution of the UWB communication system. The proposed analytical BER is closely matched to the simulated BER for all the four IEEE 802.15.3a channel models. It verifies the accuracy of the approximation considered in this BER analysis.