A Reference Model for Channel Sounder Performance Evaluation, Validation and Comparison

In this paper, we propose a detailed generic reference plane model for performance evaluation and system validation of radio channel sounders. It allows to abstractly describe a broad variety of channel sounder implementations and architectures in a common framework, thus facilitating systematic evaluations and comparisons. To illustrate the utility of the concept, we present the mapping of two practical channel sounder realizations-one time domain and one frequency domain-to the model, along with selected performance metrics defined on its reference planes. For the two presented channel sounders, we give measurement examples for these metrics.