Fast Simulation of Vehicular Channels Using Finite-State Markov Models

Designing an accurate vehicular channel simulator which generates samples at the high speed is a key issue to the vehicular communications transmission scheme and protocol design. Although the finite-state Markov channel (FSMC) models have been extensively investigated to describe fading channels, FSMC models cannot show the combined effect of shadowing and small-scale fading on the temporal statistical characteristic of the vehicular channel. In this letter, a vehicular channel simulator based on the FSMC is designed, which incorporates the impacts of shadowing with small-scale fading and movement speed on the temporal statistical characteristic. The steady-state probabilities and the closed-form expressions of state transition probabilities between channel states are derived based on the approximation of Lognormal–Nakagami distribution. To validate the accuracy of the proposed FSMC channel simulator, the derived model parameters and second-order statistical parameters of the simulated channel are compared with the real field measurements of high-speed vehicular channels.