Quantification of scenario distance within generic WINNER channel model

Starting from the premise that stochastic properties of a radio environment can be abstracted by defining scenarios, a generic MIMO channel model is built by the WINNER project. The parameter space of the WINNER model is, among others, described by normal probability distributions and correlation coefficients that provide a suitable space for scenario comparison. The possibility to quantify the distance between reference scenarios and measurements enables objective comparison and classification of measurements into scenario classes. In this paper we approximate the WINNER scenarios with multivariate normal distributions and then use the mean Kullback-Leibler divergence to quantify their divergence. The results show that the WINNER scenario groups (A, B, C, and D) or propagation classes (LoS, OLoS, and NLoS) do not necessarily ensure minimum separation within the groups/classes. Instead, the following grouping minimizes intragroup distances: (i) indoor-to-outdoor and outdoor-to-indoor scenarios (A2, B4, and C4), (ii) macrocell configurations for suburban, urban, and rural scenarios (C1, C2, and D1), and (iii) indoor/hotspot/microcellular scenarios (A1, B3, and B1). The computation of the divergence between Ilmenau and Dresden measurements and WINNER scenarios confirms that the parameters of the C2 scenario are a proper reference for a large variety of urban macrocell environments.