An Introduction to Local Multipoint Distribution Services with an Investigation of the Effects of Vegetation on the Radio Channel

This thesis takes the reader through an overview of issues pertinent to Local Multi-point Distribution Services (LMDS). The reader will first learn what LMDS is and then review the system architectures that are made available for LMDS technologies. After summarizing the basics of LMDS, we will compare it with some competing technologies.

The reader will then be guided through the aspects of millimeter (mm) wave radio link design. This should be a good lead into the experiment section, since it is suspected that the reader would want to be aware of what design techniques are involved in mm-wave radio link design and what issues may pose potential problems and how they may be mitigated.

Of the potential problems posed in the mm-wave radio link design section, one will be further investigated experimentally. This is the investigation of the effect of vegetation on the magnitude, phase and error vector magnitude (EVM) performance of an LMDS channel. The motivation for this experiment came from the review earlier work, which showed an unexpected relationship between carrier to noise ratio (C/N) and bit error rate BER.