THz Band Channel Measurements and Statistical Modeling for Urban Microcellular Environments

• Published in: IEEE transactions on wireless communications Vol. 23; no. 7; pp. 6719 - 6734
• Main Authors: Abbasi, Naveed A., Gomez-Ponce, Jorge, Kondaveti, Revanth, Kumar, Ashish, Bhagat, Eshan, Rao, Rakesh N. S., Abu-Surra, Shadi, Xu, Gary, Zhang, Charlie, Molisch, Andreas F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.07.2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna measurements; Bandwidth; Bandwidths; Frequency measurement; Loss measurement; microcellular; outdoor channel; Performance assessment; Semiconductor device measurement; statistical modeling; Statistical models; Street canyons; Terahertz frequencies; THz channel measurements; Time measurement; urban scenario; Wireless communication; Wireless communications
• ISSN: 1536-1276; 1558-2248
• DOI: 10.1109/TWC.2023.3328236

The THz band has attracted considerable attention for next-generation wireless communications due to the large amount of available bandwidth that may be key to meet the rapidly increasing data rate requirements. Before deploying a system in this band, a detailed wireless channel analysis is required as the basis for proper design and testing of system implementations. One of the most important deployment scenarios of this band is the outdoor microcellular environment, where the Transmitter (Tx) and the Receiver (Rx) have a significant height difference (typically <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX"> \ge 10 </tex-math></inline-formula> m). In this paper, we present double-directional (i.e., directionally resolved at both link ends) channel measurements in such a microcellular scenario encompassing street canyons and an open square. Measurements are done for a 1 GHz bandwidth between 145-146 GHz and an antenna beamwidth of 13 degree; distances between Tx and Rx are up to 85 m and the Tx is at a height of 11.5 m from the ground. The measurements are analyzed to estimate path loss, shadowing, delay spread, angular spread, and multipath component (MPC) power distribution. These results allow the development of more realistic and detailed THz system performance assessment.