On the high-speed railway communication at 30 GHz band: Feasibility and channel characteristics

Simulations for studying novel high-speed railway millimeter-wave radio propagation channels in urban city are presented in this paper by using verified ray-tracing tool. Based on setups of three antenna beam steering strategies at transceiver, the comparisons among these strategies are given by system feasibility and radio channel characteristics. Numerical results of the simulations are shown to illustrate that adaptive antenna beam steering could greatly improve system performances. However, jointly using fixed and adaptive beam steering is recommended as a trade off between technology implementation and channel performance. Moreover, the system effects from different distances between base station and railroad track are investigated. By selecting a reasonable distance, the detailed radio channel characteristics are extracted including delay spread and Doppler spread, which could serve as a guide for future physical layer design.