FR3 for 6G Networks: A Comparative Study against FR1 and FR2 Across Diverse Environments

TL;DR

This study evaluates the potential of Frequency Range 3 (FR3) for 6G networks, comparing its performance against FR1 and FR2 across various urban environments using ray-tracing channel modeling.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of FR3, FR1, and FR2 in diverse urban scenarios, highlighting FR3's advantages and challenges for 6G and C-V2B communications.

Findings

FR3 achieves higher data rates than FR2 at cell edges under equal aperture sizes.

Transitioning from vehicular to pedestrian UEs has minimal impact on coverage probability.

FR3 offers a promising middle ground between sub-6 GHz and mmWave bands for 6G.

Abstract

Motivated by increasing wireless capacity demands and 6G advancements, the newly defined Frequency Range 3 (FR3, 7.125-24.25 GHz), also known as the upper mid-band, has emerged as a promising spectrum candidate. It offers a balance between the large bandwidth potential of millimeter-wave bands and the favorable propagation characteristics of sub-6 GHz bands. As a result, the upper mid-band presents a strong opportunity to enhance both coverage and capacity, particularly for 6G systems and Cellular Vehicle-to-Base Station (C-V2B) communications. Harnessing this potential, however, requires addressing key technical challenges through accurate and realistic channel modeling across diverse urban environments, including Suburban, Urban, and HighRise Urban scenarios. To this end, we employ a ray-tracing tool to characterize downlink propagation and enable detailed channel modeling for reliable C-V2B links. We evaluate data rate performance across FR1 (sub-6 GHz), FR3, and FR2 (mmWave) bands using antenna array configurations designed for different urban environments. The results show that, under equal aperture sizes, FR3 achieves higher data rates than FR2 for cell-edge User Equipment (UEs) in both interference-free and full-interference scenarios, indicating that the additional array gain at mmWave is insufficient to fully compensate for the severe experienced path loss. Integrating one-hand-grip pedestrian UEs model into ray tracer shows that transitioning from vehicular to pedestrian UEs results in negligible differences in coverage probability (about 1\%--3\%) across all frequencies, with the minimum differences observed in FR3, particularly at 8.2 GHz.