Radio channel sounders for modeling mobile communications at 28 GHz, 60 GHz and 83 GHz

NIST has developed a new channel sounder design specifically to support radio-channel model development for 5G millimeter-wave mobile communications. Design elements include 40 GB/s real-time sampling; an electronically switched, high-gain, directional receive antenna array covering the upper hemisphere; and automated mobile operations. These features allow measurement of calibrated received signal strength and the spatio-temporal channel response for both indoor and outdoor environments under mobile conditions. An 83 GHz system is described in this paper while 28 GHz and 60 GHz systems, in process, have similar capabilities. To our knowledge, this work contributes the first channel sounder which is capable of broadband, 3D, mobile measurements at millimeter-wave frequencies.