Multipath propagation is a common phenomenon in radio propagation, where a signal travels to its destination by multiple paths.
Rayleigh fading, named after Lord Rayleigh, is the fading of a communications channel generated by the interference of different out-of-phase signals travelling by different paths. The standard statistical model of this gives a distribution known as the Rayleigh distribution.
Rayleigh fading with a strong line of sight content is said to have a Rician distribution, or to be Rician fading.
