Abstract—In this paper, we analyze and compare seven of the most accepted and approved simulation models for Rayleigh fading channels. These models cover the three popular methods for generating time-correlated Rayleigh fading processes: the inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) method, the filtering white Gaussian noise (FWGN) method and the sum-of-sinusoids (SOS) method. Three quantitative measures are used for judicious assessment of the quality of generated processes. The study addresses first- and second-order statistics of the fading process. The variance of the autocorrelation function (ACF) of the fading process is used to investigate the convergence of the stochastic SOS-based models. An evaluation of the computational effort is additionally presented. The simulation results suggest that the recently published Wang’s model is very attractive and it outperforms all SOS models. This study leads to several important conclusions about the accuracy, capability and efficiency of the different Rayleigh fading generators.

Index Terms—Radio propagation channels, Clarke’s model, Rayleigh fading channel simulators, performance analysis.

Mohamed Ali Skima and Hamadi Ghariani are with the Laboratory of Electronics and Information Technology (LETI), National School of Engineers of Sfax, University of Sfax, B.P. 1173, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia.
Amira Boulaaba is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Higher Institute of Technological Studies of Rades, Tunis, Tunisia.

Cite:Mohamed Ali Skima, Amira Boulaaba, Hamadi Ghariani, "On the Performance of Different Simulation Models for Rayleigh Fading Channels," International Journal of Computer and Communication Engineering vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 229-237, 2016.