Rayleigh Fading

Rayleigh fading is a statistical model for the effect of a propagation environment on a radio signal, such as that used by wireless devices.

Rayleigh fading models assume that the magnitude of a signal that has passed through such a transmission medium (also called a communications channel) will vary randomly, or fade, according to a Rayleigh distribution — the radial component of the sum of two uncorrelated Gaussian random variables.

Rayleigh fading is viewed as a reasonable model for tropospheric and ionospheric signal propagation as well as the effect of heavily built-up urban environments on radio signals. Rayleigh fading is most applicable when there is no dominant propagation along a line of sight between the transmitter and receiver. If there is a dominant line of sight, Rician fading may be more applicable.