60 GHz Wireless Link Within Metal Enclosures: Channel Measurements and System Analysis

TL;DR

This paper presents detailed 60 GHz wireless channel measurements within metal enclosures, revealing high reflectivity and scattering, and evaluates system performance in such environments.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive measurement-based channel model for 60 GHz in metal enclosures, including large-scale and small-scale characteristics, and assesses OFDM system performance.

Findings

High reflectivity causes rich scattering in metal enclosures.

Large RMS delay spread differs from typical indoor channels.

OFDM system performance is affected by the metal environment.

Abstract

Wireless channel measurement results for 60 GHz within a closed metal cabinet are provided. A metal cabinet is chosen to emulate the environment within a mechatronic system, which have metal enclosures in general. A frequency domain sounding technique is used to measure the wireless channel for different volumes of the metal enclosure, considering both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios. Large-scale and small-scale characteristics of the wireless channel are extracted in order to build a comprehensive channel model. In contrast to conventional indoor channels at 60 GHz, the channel in the metal enclosure is highly reflective resulting in a rich scattering environment with a significantly large root-mean-square (RMS) delay spread. Based on the obtained measurement results, the bit error rate (BER) performance is evaluated for a wideband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system.