The Impact of Carrier Frequency at 800 MHz and 3.5 GHz in Urban and Rural Environments Using Large Antenna Arrays

The widespread use of wireless mobile communications in past years has resulted in a mass use of the 2 GHz band. As a consequence, the 3.5 GHz and 800 MHz bands have emerged as an excellent alternative for mobile operators. In this paper, we investigate such alternatives using the 3GPP 3-dimensional (3D) channel model. We show the impact of both 800 MHz and 3.5 GHz carrier frequencies not only in an urban but also in a rural environment. We consider indoor and outdoor users, as well as line-of-sight (LOS) and non line-of-sight (NLOS) users. We evaluate and compare the performance in terms of Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR), Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP), Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ).