Multi-level modulation in the indoors leaky feeder environment

Leaky feeders offer the prospect of high average signal to noise ratio (SNR) in an indoors environment. The signal is transmitted from a series of slots acting as antennae and superposition of the paths results in fades of up to 25 dB below the mean signal level. A model is presented for the propagation path between the leaky feeder base station (BS) antenna and a single omnidirectional receiver antenna, which was verified using measurements. The bit error rate (BER) performance of such a system is investigated for 1, 2 and 4 bits per symbol, coherent and non-coherent modulation schemes. These are compared with the performance of a more conventional indoor BS antenna.