Estimation of Dispersive Model Parameters from Time Domain Measurements on an Operational FM Channel

Predicting the outage of microwave line-of-sight digital radio requires estimates of the dispersive characteristics of multipath fading. Providing a method for the estimation of these characteristics on existing numerous FM links would be beneficial. This paper presents the analysis and development of a method for obtaining estimates of dispersive fading parameters from measurements of received power and an enhancement of a pilot in the detected FM signal. Using an idealized FM system model and experimental data measured in Gainesville, Florida, it is demonstrated here that dispersive fading parameters for a line-of-sight microwave link can be predicted by scaling of the statistics of the fading parameters obtained by the method described in this paper.