Improving millimetre wave coverage in an indoor environment using passive reflectors

At millimetre wave frequencies, diffraction cannot be relied upon to provide coverage into non-line-of-sight regions, resulting in shadow regions formed behind obstacles. This paper investigates the use of passive planar and spherical reflectors to target coverage into shadow regions which may be formed by common obstructions (e.g. humans) in an indoor environment. It is observed that the use of curved reflectors increases the angular spread of reflected field components, at the cost of the amount of reflected power. It is also noted that the placement of a reflector needs to be carefully considered to achieve optimal coverage into a given shadow region.