Wireless Channel Delay Spread Performance Evaluation of a Building Layout

Evaluating a building's wireless performance during the building design process is a new paradigm for wireless communications and building design. This article proposes the earliest building wireless performance (BWP) evaluation theory focusing on the channel delay spread (DS). The novel contributions of this article lie in the following aspects. 1) We define a new metric called DS gain, which is the first metric for evaluating the channel DS performance of a building layout. 2) We propose an analytical model to compute the metric quickly and accurately. 3) The proposed scheme is validated via Monte-Carlo simulations under typical indoor scenarios. Numerical results reveal that the building layout has a clear impact on the root mean square (RMS) DS. The significance of this work is twofold: 1) Architects need to consider DS gain when designing buildings to avoid severe inter-symbol interference (ISI) due to large DS gain; 2) Wireless network researchers and engineers can use DS gain and related fast and accurate calculation methods to guide wireless systems design to combat ISI.