First-Principles Model of Time-Dependent Variations in Transmission through a Fluctuating Scattering Environment

Fading is the time-dependent variation in transmitted signal strength through a complex medium due to interference or temporally evolving multipath scattering. In this paper we use random matrix theory (RMT) to establish a first-principles model for fading, including both universal and nonuniversal effects. This model provides a more general understanding of the most common statistical models (Rayleigh fading and Rice fading) and provides a detailed physical basis for their parameters. We also report experimental tests on two ray-chaotic microwave cavities. The results show that our RMT model agrees with the Rayleigh and Rice models in the high-loss regime, but there are strong deviations in low-loss systems where the RMT approach describes the data well.