Effect of Human Blockage on an Outdoor mmWave Channel for 5G Communication Networks

Millimeter-wave (mmWave)technology is going to be a fundamental part of the next-generation wireless communication for its potential to meet the ever-rising traffic demand and the bandwidth scarcity with its raw unused spectrum. However, channel modeling for mmWave is quite challenging owing to its susceptibility to blockage and weather elements and its requirement for line-of-sight (LOS) links for communication. In this paper, we proposed an extension of the channel simulator NYUSIM by introducing a new input parameter and observe the channel characteristics for several mmWave frequency bands (28, 38, 60, and 73 GHz) in a rural macrocell environment. A simple knife edge diffraction model was used to simulate the human blockers in the channel model. The results include the effect of blocker density on various power delay statistics including received power, path loss, RMS delay spread, and path loss exponent (PLE).