Cellular broadband millimeter wave propagation and angle of arrival for adaptive beam steering systems (invited paper)

Abstract

The advent of inexpensive millimeter wave devices and steerable antennas will lead to future cellular networks that use carrier frequencies at 28 GHz, 38 GHz, 60 GHz, and above. At these frequencies, the available RF bandwidth is much greater than that of current 4G systems, and high gain millimeter wave steerable antennas can be made in much smaller form factor than current products. This paper presents an extensive measurement campaign and initial results for base-station - to - mobile propagation situations at 38 GHz carrier frequencies in an outdoor urban environment using directional, steerable antennas. This work provides angle of arrival (AOA) and RF multipath characteristics for highly directional antenna beams that may exploit non-line-of-sight propagation paths for futuristic channels at 38 GHz. This work yields data for a variety of antenna pointing and antenna beamwidth scenarios in line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios.