Non-Line-of-Sight 5G Fixed Wireless Access Performance Testing and Monitoring using COTS Antennas

Over the years, effective transmission of radio signals on trains and moving vehicles alike has been difficult owing to non-line-of-sight (NLOS) communications. This work is centered on the use of passive reflectors employing different obstacles to improve radio transmission for the study of the NLOS communications in the 60 GHz mmWave for indoor scenarios. In this study, we compute the gain achieved in the transmission link using two commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) antennas by way of analytical and beam tracing for the end-to-end transmissions. In particular, we demonstrated a systematic guide for the end-to-end received power in an NLOS situation using six different signal transmission obstacles. For a given geometry of the obstacles, we showed that the reflected received throughput for the NLOS link followed a similar pattern in comparison to the line-of-sight (LOS) link received throughput. We used the 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) platform as one of the most dynamic and fast-growing segments of the 5G network where the use of antennas with relays can overcome the limitations of NLOS to provide the needed connectivity.