Radio waves bounce off buildings, terrain, and atmospheric layers before hitting the receiving antenna. Because these paths have different lengths, the identical signals arrive at slightly different times and phases. This causes interference that can degrade the signal or cause data dropouts. Current digital systems use advanced coding to combine these delayed copies and actually improve the link quality.
The link budget looks fine on paper, but multipath in that urban canyon is destroying our throughput.
Older analog television systems showed this effect as ghosting on the screen, while current digital receivers treat it as extra signal energy to decode.
Also heard as
- multipath propagation
- multipath interference
Related terms
OFDM
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, a digital transmission method using multiple subcarriers.
Propagation mode
The specific path or physical mechanism by which an electromagnetic wave travels from a transmitter to a receiver.
Ghosting
A faint, offset duplicate of a television or display image caused by multipath interference or slow panel response.
LOS
Loss of signal, a condition where a receiver no longer detects a valid incoming transmission.