mmTrace: Modeling millimeter-wave indoor propagation with image-based ray-tracing

Current mm-wave indoor propagation analysis techniques have limited options when it comes to more than one transmitter and receiver. Experimental testbed hardware is expensive and state-of-the-art simulation methods, such as statistical channel models, are limited to specific scenarios. To overcome these problems, we present mmTrace, a fast deterministic image-based ray-tracing simulation framework for mm-wave propagation. It supports developing mm-wave specific protocols and, in contrast to common statistical models, deals with multiple transceivers. The strengths of mmTrace constitute signal variations at different receivers and interference of multiple transmitters, which are crucial in certain situations. We implement our framework in MATLAB and validate simulated channel impulse responses against those of statistical channel models for IEEE 802.11ad in well-defined scenarios. Our results indicate that image-based ray-tracing is a feasible tool to predict interference in mm-wave communication systems.