Statistical analysis of the power delay profile of a SIMO UHF backscatter RFID channel in an engine test bed

The stringent constraint in any wireless communication system is the wireless channel itself. The indoor radio channel in an industrial environment exhibits a lot of multipath due to the prevalent metallic structures. In this research, an indoor radio channel is investigated in a severe multipath engine test bed environment. The study of this channel is undertaken for the applicability of a cost-efficient passive ultra high frequency radio frequency identification system capable of performing two dimensional localization of tagged objects in an engine test bed facility. The channel transfer functions were measured using a vector network analyzer. Vital channel characteristics investigated in this paper are the power delay profiles, the root mean square (RMS) delay and the power-ratio between the line of sight (LoS) and non-line of sight (NLoS) paths. The maximum RMS delay experienced is 47.1 ns and a minimum of 8.6 ns. The power-ratio values are appreciable for the majority of the LoS positions, but not satisfactory for the NLoS positions. Using this information, it will be helpful in analyzing the localization performance of a measurement-based system simulator or of a prospective hardware setup, in an engine test bed environment.