Simple Dipole Scatter for Filling a Shadow Region

For ever-increasing demand for communication capacity, carrier frequencies are increasing, but this brings greater shadowing which compromises the radio coverage. For example, mmWave signals are severely attenuated in the simplest of non-line-of-sight scenarios - around the corner of a building. We present a simple corner modification comprising a fixed scattering dipole to improve the coverage in the shadow region of the corner diffraction. Simulations are used to thoroughly investigate the scenario, and our numerical experiments are validated with physical experiments. For the vertical polarization, a signal level increase of well over ten dB in the shadow region is demonstrated using a single half-wavelength dipole scatterer.