Practical Aspects on the Noise Floor Estimation and Cut-off Margin in Channel Sounding Applications

The characterization of propagation at mm-waves and THz is obtaining relevance since they are expected to be the frequency bands of the future wireless generations. Hence, measurements conducted all around the world with different equipments need to be comparable by establishing common methodologies and best-practice guidelines. As an example, all measurements are affected by noise, but its estimation and removal are not standardized. Therefore, in the present paper we define a methodology on the estimation of the noise floor and the cut-off margin for its subsequent removal. We firstly analyse the influence of the channel sounder noise floor on the estimation of different propagation parameters directly from the measured channel impulse responses (CIRs), showing the need of its removal before any processing of the measurements. Later, we introduce an algorithm to estimate the noise floor in the presence of signal, and the cut-off margin. Finally, we evaluate its performance empirically with measurements.