On emulating and controlling rician propagation in wireless laboratory

Channel emulators are usually used to evaluate preliminary performances of the newly developed wireless algorithms in the laboratory without resorting to the on-site measurements which are generally complex and costly. In this study, a simple but effective channel emulator that features a benchtop-sized (small-sized) reverberation chamber (RVC), radio frequency (RF) cable, and power controller is proposed for emulating a Rician propagation environment with a flexibly controllable k-factor. The developed emulator has the ability to precisely introduce the Rician propagation effect (with the desired k-factor) to the input RF signal. The performance of the proposed emulator was evaluated through measurement and its accuracy was validated by conducting a Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) goodness-of-fit (GoF) test. The emulator is suitable for both algorithm/prototype testing and educational purpose in wireless laboratories.