UEC1701

High Frequency Communication

Systems
MILLIMETER WAVE PROPAGATION
 Session Meta Data

Author R Kishore

Version No 1.1

Release Date 13.07.2021

Reviewer
 Revision History

Date of Revision Details Version Number

 Session Objectives

 To discuss the indoor channel models for millimeter waves in

detail
 Indoor Channel models
• For proper link budget and coverage/capacity designs, indoor channel models
will be needed to deploy mmWave communication systems.
• For deployment and system analysis, frequencies above 5 GHz lend
themselves well to site-specific modeling, where the accuracy of such
methods is remarkably good for estimating both the received signal levels, as
well as multipath components and their angles of arrival.
• For the development of wireless standards and for having a unified approach
to simulating bit error rates, PHY and MAC layer improvements, as well as
beam steering and cooperative communication methods, it is more desirable
to have a statistical channel model, which accounts for both time delays and
spatial multipath, for simulations and bench testing of hardware.
 Indoor Channel models
• Two dominant characteristics of antennas in the indoor environment
influence the observed multipath at the receiver: antenna directivity and
electromagnetic field polarization.
• The first characteristic, antenna directivity, refers to ratio of the power
radiated in a given direction to the total radiated power average over all
directions. Because directive transmit antennas favour certain directions,
less space is excited.
• Similarly, directive receive antennas capture energy from less space. As a
result, directive antennas can be used to reduce multipath contributions by
limiting the space from which radiation is captured.
• RMS delay spread was reduced from 18 ns to 1 ns by using a highly directive
antenna.
• The penetration loss of partitions, as well as reflection coefficients, play a
large role in properly modeling mmWave indoor channels
 Indoor Channel models
• Ray tracing models
• Due to the dominance of reflection and scattering in the
mmWave wireless environment and the lack of diffraction
contributions, ray tracing is a popular and accurate method to
reproduce wireless channels.
• The main limitation of ray-tracing models is the lack of
flexibility. Ray-tracing models must be applied to a specific
environment.
• It is harder to characterize channel models for different
environments (e.g., indoor, outdoor) without an accurate
physical model of the environment, although such a site-specific
approach is highly desirable for individual installations of
wireless networks
 Indoor Channel models
No LOS
Rayleigh, Rician models
• Rayleigh: Rayleigh fading is a reasonable model when there are many objects
in the environment that scatter the radio signal before it arrives at the
receiver.
• If there is sufficiently much scatter, the channel impulse response will be
well-modelled as a Gaussian process irrespective of the distribution of the
individual components. If there is no dominant component to the scatter, then
such a process will have zero mean.
The probability density function (PDF) of the small-scale received signal
envelope voltage is
 Indoor Channel models
Rayleigh, Rician models
• Rician:

In mmwave indoor scenario at 60GHz, the LOS component dominates and the
strongest NLOS component is often not very strong in comparison, leading to
Rician fading, and not Rayleigh fading. LOS path present
 Indoor Channel models

• IEEE 802.15.3c and IEEE 802.11ad Channel

Models
• IEEE 802.11ad channel model is based on a
generalization of the popular Saleh-Valenzuela
channel model
 Summary
• Real-world measurements and modeling techniques that give an early look at the
radio channel properties of emerging mmWave systems.
• As carrier frequencies and bandwidths increase, there will surely be a need for new
models, measurements, and methodologies that can aid engineers in the
development and deployment of wireless products.
 Test Your Understanding
• What is a frequency selectivity?
• Comment on the frequency selectivity of mmwave bands
• On what factor does spatial fading depend on?
• Explain vehicle to vehicle model.
 References
• Robert W. Heath, Robert C. Daniel, James N. Theodore S.
Rappaport, Murdock, Millimeter Wave Wireless
Communication, Prentice Hall, 2014.
Thank you !