Characterization of mm-wave Indoor Propagation with Directive Antennas

The rapid and widespread demand for new services, as high-speed data and multimedia services, which are very demanding in terms of bitrate and thus bandwidth, are increasing the interest toward broadband applications. The aim of the work is to study if and when the selective fading can be effectively coped with by the adoption of directive antennas, so exploiting the inherent angular diversity of the communciation channel. The achievable improvements are highlighted and some suggestions for the design of future millimeter wave wireless LANs are provided. The investigation is accomplished by means of an electromagnetic computer model, based on a fully 3D ray tracing approach. The adopted algorithm has been validated by comparison with some test measurements both at 30 and 60 GHz, whereas the adopted electromagnetic parameters have been estimated by means of specific measurements of the materials characteristics.