Outdoor-to-indoor propagation loss measurements for broadband wireless access in rural areas

This paper reports on the outdoor-to-indoor propagation measurements for broadband wireless access systems in rural areas. The study is based on measurements conducted at seven selected residential buildings in a rural area where two WiMAX OFDMA systems (IEEE 802.16e), operated at 825 MHz and 3500 MHz, were individually erected on towers of 25 m above ground in the north-west area of Hetzwege, Germany. It has been found that the penetration loss for measurements performed behind the walls without windows was about 10 to 20 dB at both 825 and 3500 MHz. In the presence of windows and with sufficient clearance to the operating base station, the penetration loss was reduced by 5 to 6 dB at both frequencies. A penetration loss prediction model, extended from the COST-231 penetration model, is proposed in the last section and this model gives a promising prediction as compared with the measurement data.