Multiple Ray Received Power Modeling for mmWave Indoor and Outdoor Scenarios

TL;DR

This paper models mmWave propagation in indoor and outdoor scenarios using multiple rays, highlighting how the number of dominant rays and antenna patterns influence received power and path loss characteristics.

Contribution

It introduces a ray-based propagation model considering the number of dominant rays and antenna radiation patterns, improving accuracy for indoor and outdoor mmWave channel modeling.

Findings

Two dominant rays suffice for outdoor modeling.

Indoor scenarios require five dominant rays for accuracy.

Antenna radiation patterns affect path loss slope.

Abstract

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands are expected to be used for future 5G networks due to the availability of large unused spectrum. However, the attenuation at mmWave frequencies is high. To resolve this issue, the utilization of high gain antennas and beamforming mechanisms are widely investigated in the literature. In this work, we considered mmWave end-to-end propagation modeled by individual ray sources, and explored the effects of the number of rays in the model and radiation patterns of the deployed antennas on the received power. It is shown that taking the dominant two rays is sufficient to model the channel for outdoor open areas as opposed to the indoor corridor which needs five dominant rays to have a good fit for the measurement and simulation results. It is observed that the radiation pattern of the antenna affects the slope of the path loss. Multi-path components increase the received power, thus, for indoor corridor scenarios, path loss according to the link distance is smaller for lower gain antennas due to increased reception of reflected components. For an outdoor open area, the slope of the path loss is found to be very close to that of the free space.