On channel uncertainty modeling - An information theoretic approach

Abstract

This paper analyses time varying nature of the mobile communications channel which affects the channel information capacity. The channel uncertainty is a fundamental issue for the information theory of the time varying mobile communication channels and here we use an information theoretic approach to channel uncertainty modeling. Although we analyse the Final State Markov Channel (FSMC) models, our approach still does enable considerable conceptual insight to be gained. In the first step of our analysis, we define four axioms which qualitatively describe the non-trivial influence of the channel uncertainty to the time-varying channel information capacity. Then, we focus on the FSMC models which capture these axioms. We present the concept of Time Varying Binary Symmetric Channel (TV-BSC) to further support our analysis. The TV-BSC is the simplest FSMC model that shows a non-trivial influence on capacity due to the channel uncertainty. We provide the information theoretic analysis of the TV-BSC model including the information capacity calculation and the TV-BSC estimation analysis.