Statistical millimeter wave channel modelling for 5G and beyond

Millimetre wave (mmWave) wireless communication is one of the most promising technologies for the fifth generation (5G) wireless communication networks and beyond. The very broad bandwidth and directional propagation are the two features of mmWave channels. In order to develop the channel models properly reflecting the characteristics of mmWave channels, the in-depth studies of mmWave channels addressing those two features are required. In this thesis, three mmWave channel models and one beam alignment scheme are proposed related to those two features. First, for studying the very broad bandwidth feature of mmWave channels, we introduce an averaged power delay profile (APDP) method to estimate the frequency stationarity regions (FSRs) of channels. The frequency non-stationary (FnS) properties of channels are found in the data analysis. A FnS model is proposed to model the FnS channels in both the sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequency bands and cluster evolution in the frequency domain is utilised in the implementation of FnS model. Second, for studying the directional propagation feature of mmWave channels, we develop an angular APDP (A-APDP) method to study the planar angular stationarity regions (ASRs) of directional channels (DCs). Three typical directional channel impulse responses (D-CIRs) are found in the data analysis and light-of-sight (LOS), non-LOS (NLOS), and outage classes are used to classify those DCs. A modified Saleh-Valenzuela (SV) model is proposed to model the DCs. The angular domain cluster evolution is utilised to ensure the consistency of DCs. Third, we further extend the A-APDP method to study the spherical-ASRs of DCs. We model the directional mmWave channels by three-state Markov chain that consists of LOS, NLOS, and outage states and we use stationary model, non-stationary model, and “null” to describe the channels in each Markov state according to the estimated ASRs. Then, we propose to use joint channel models to simulate the instantaneous directional mmWave channels based on the limiting distribution of Markov chain. Finally, the directional propagated mmWave channels when the Tx and Rx in motion is addressed. A double Gaussian beams (DGBs) scheme for mobile-to-mobile (M2M) mmWave communications is proposed. The connection ratios of directional mmWave channels in each Markov state are studied

Sparsity in the Delay-Doppler Domain for Measured 60 GHz Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Communication Channels

We report results from millimeter wave vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) channel measurements conducted on Sept. 25, 2018 in an urban street environment, down-town Vienna, Austria. Measurements of a frequency-division multiplexed multiple-input single-output channel have been acquired with a time-domain channel sounder at 60 GHz with a bandwidth of 100 MHz and a frequency resolution of 5 MHz. Two horn antennas were used on a moving transmitter vehicle: one horn emitted a beam towards the horizon and the second horn emitted an elevated beam at 15-degrees up-tilt. This configuration was chosen to assess the impact of beam elevation on V2I communication channel characteristics: propagation loss and sparsity of the local scattering function in the delay-Doppler domain. The measurement results within urban speed limits show high sparsity in the delay-Doppler domain.Comment: submitted to IEEE International Conference on Communication

Characterisation of propagation in 60 GHz radio channels (invited)

Narrowband as well as wideband measurements have been performed in various indoor and outdoor environments in order to enable the development of reliable prediction models for 60 GHz radio channels. In addition, results of deterministic modelling on the basis of geometric ray-tracing have been compared with measurement results, showing that simple ray-tracing can be used to estimate both the narrowband and wideband characteristics of a 60 GHz radio channel. This paper reviews the measurement and modelling activities performed by various research institute