Delay spread and received power measurements within a building at 2 GHz, 5 GHz and 17 GHz

In order to design a radio-based high bit rate data transmission system the multipath time dispersion characteristics of the radio channel, and in particular the RMS delay spread, are an important consideration. For the prediction of system coverage and spectrum planning the effect of the indoor environment on the received signal power at different locations within a building must also be considered. Very few results have been published, however, for actual radiowave propagation measurements obtained within buildings at these frequencies. RMS delay spread and received power results are presented for measurements at 2 GHz, 5 GHz and 17 GHz covering a wide variety of typical indoor scenarios including line-of-sight transmission within a room, obstructed transmission within a room and transmission between rooms. Frequency responses were obtained for three transmitter locations and one hundred and eighty receiver locations on the sixth floor of the Faraday Tower building at the University of Wales Swansea. Non-parametric statistical tests were performed on the RMS delay spread data from which a number of conclusions are drawn.