Experimental Study of Propagation Characteristics in an Open-Trench Drain

As terrestrial wireless communication systems become more ubiquitous, there is a rising need to study the propagation characteristics of every habitable environment so that effective communication systems can be established. Past research showed that open-trench drains, whose presence is prevailing in many Asian cities, make up an additional channel in which radio signal can adequately travel. In this letter, we have further our studies in the propagation characteristics of an open-trench drain to delve into areas that have not been previously reported. Specifically, we present field measurement results of an open-trench drain for line-of-sight (LoS) and non-line-of-sight (NLoS) portions at three frequencies (900 MHz, 2.4 and 5.8 GHz) for three different polarizations, namely, vertical-vertical (VV), horizontal-horizontal (HH), and horizontal-vertical (HV) polarizations. Subsequently, we have adopted K-means clustering approach to process the obtained data in deriving path loss exponent n and their associated standard deviation. Comparison is made of the n values, as well as the standard deviation values, before and after employing K-means clustering.