Noise in mobile radio environment

Human made noise at the base station provides the noise level for the SNR at base station reception. Two types of spurious noise are usually considered: (i) automotive noise & (ii) industrial plant noise. In mobile radio environment the dominant noise is automotive noise. The secondary source of noise is power generation facilities, while the third rank noise source is industrial equipments. Automotive noise: The ignition system of a gasoline engine is a source of high voltage and electrical currents that function continuously during vehicle operation. Radiation produced by high pulse currents and voltages in cabling, and at points of ignition circuit discontinuity is the primary source of automotive radio noise. At the base station the antenna is usually 36 m (120 ft) or more from mobile ignition noise source, which makes the noise level received by the base station receiver lower than that at street level as received by a mobile receiver. The ignition noise levels from the ignition system of the mobile unit itself and from another mobile unit are about the same. Assume that the ignition noise level at the mobile unit is based on the member M of the ignition system and an average distance d 1 from it to the surrounding mobile units. Assume that the ignition noise level at the base station antenna is based on the number N of the mobile ignition systems surrounding it, the average distance d2 from it to the surrounding mobile units. Since the base station antenna height is 33 m (100ft) or more, it receives from ignition noise level from a large number of mobile ignition systems for its height. The number N is larger than the number M, say N=10M However, the distance d2 is also greater than the distance d1 (see figure below) Base Station

MM

Fig: model for estimating base station noise 1

The noise level will be proportionally lower to the square of the distances. The difference in noise level N between the base station reception and the mobile unit is : N = 10 log [ (N/M) (d1/d2)2] = 10 log [ 10 (30 ft/120 ft)2] = -2 dB Once the ignition noise level at a mobile unit receiver in a particular area is the base station receiver noise level is about 1 to 2 db lower because its antenna is located away from the ignition noise sources. Human made noise is overshadowed by the ignition noise of the vehicles. Because all vehicles travel on the road very close to each other, signal reception at each vehicle is effected by its own ignition noise and that of surrounding vehicles. The best information on the mobile noise environment is a measurement of traffic flow. The human made noise level can be extrapolated from the traffic flow information. To estimate the ignition spike width and the number of spikes in one second, a simple calculation is as follows: one sharp spike of ignition noise exceeding 200 amperes typically lasts 1 to 5 n sec. The high portion of the spike will get into a frequency range from 200 m Hz to 1 G Hz. The spike width below 100 amps is 20 n sec. Assume that an engine has eight cylinders and each of them has a speed of 3000 rpm, since at any instant of time only half of them are fired, then 4 3000 rpm = 12,000 rpm = 200 spikes/sec If there are many vehicles on the road, the number of spikes is multiplied by the number of vehicles. This is why spurious noise is dependent on the traffic. The low portion of the spike will affect the low frequency. For a spike lasting more than 20 n sec, the effect on the frequency will be 50 MHz or less. The noise level is always higher with higher traffic density. The average automotive noise level is 50%. The distribution of automotive noise follows the log normal distribution.

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