The Fluctuating Two-Ray Fading Model for mmWave Communications

We introduce the Fluctuating Two-Ray (FTR) fading model, a new statistical channel model that consists of two fluctuating specular components with random phases plus a diffuse component. The FTR model arises as a natural generalization of the two-wave with diffuse power (TWDP) fading model proposed by Durgin, Rappaport and de Wolf; in this extended model, the two specular components exhibit a random amplitude fluctuation. Unlike in the TWDP model, we show that all the chief probability functions of the FTR fading model (PDF, CDF and MGF) can be expressed in closed-form. We also show that the FTR fading model provides a much better fit than the Rician fading model for recent small-scale fading measurements of the 28 GHz outdoor millimeter-wave channels.