Fading is the time-dependent variation in transmitted signal strength through a complex medium, due to interference or temporally evolving multipath scattering. In this paper we use random matrix theory (RMT) to establish a first-principles model for fading, including both universal and non-universal effects. This model provides a more general understanding of the most common statistical models (Rayleigh fading and Rice fading) and provides a detailed physical basis for their parameters. We also report experimental tests on two ray-chaotic microwave cavities. The results show that our RMT model agrees with the Rayleigh/Rice models in the high loss regime, but there are strong deviations in low-loss systems where the RMT approach describes the data well.
@article{arxiv.1107.5838,
title = {A first-principles model of time-dependent variations in transmission through a fluctuating scattering environment},
author = {Jen-Hao Yeh and Thomas M. Antonsen and Edward Ott and Steven M. Anlage},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.5838},
year = {2012}
}