Frequency-domain measurement of 60 GHz indoor channels: a measurement setup, literature data, and analysis

Despite the unique capability of 60-GHz technology to offer a multi-gigabit rate and a huge unlicensed bandwidth (up to 7 GHz), a number of technical challenges need to be overcome before its full deployment. The system performance of capacity, coverage, and throughput need to be well understood. All of these are based on characterizing the propagation channel and establishing realistic channel models of wireless systems [1]. Many researchers have reported on propagation studies of indoor channels at 60 GHz using frequency-domain measurements. However, details are scarce in the literature on whether different indoor environments and different frequency-domain measurement setups affect the measurement results in the millimeter-wave frequency band. This article explains the setup details of time resolution, spatial resolution, and windowing, then summarizes and analyzes frequency-domain measurement results selected from important research [2]-[9]. The mean path loss model and the average cumulative distribution function of a root mean squared (rms) delay spread are proposed and compared using measured results from the literature to describe the complete channel characteristics of indoor environments at 60 GHz.