Centimeter and Millimeter-Wave Propagation Characteristics for Indoor Corridors: Results From Measurements and Models

The millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency band is projected to play a critical role in next-generation wireless networks owing to its large available bandwidth. Despite the theoretical potential for high data throughput, the mm-wave frequency faces numerous challenges—including severe path loss and high penetration loss. Therefore, a reliable understanding of channel propagation characteristics is required for the development of accurate and simple indoor communication systems. In this study, we conducted measurement campaigns with unique transmitter- receiver combinations using horn and tracking antennas, at 3.7 and 28 GHz in an indoor corridor environment on the 10th floor of an IT building and the 3rd floor of the main building of Chosun University, Gwangju, South Korea, and the details are presented herein. In both line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight scenarios, the large-scale path losses, and small-scale channel statistics, such as root mean square delay spread, and number of clusters, were obtained using the measurement results in a waveguide structure indoor corridor environment. We have proposed alternate methodologies beyond classical channel modeling to improve path loss models using artificial neural network (ANN) techniques—to alleviate channel complexity and avoid the time-consuming measurement process. The presented regression successfully assists the prediction of the path loss model in a new operating environment using measurement data from a specific scenario. The validated results suggest that the ANN large-scale path loss model used in this study outperforms the close-in reference distance and floating-intercept (alpha-beta) models. Additionally, our result shows that the number of time clusters follows an Erlang distribution.