Dust Storm and Diffraction Modelling for 5G Spectrum Wireless Fixed Links in Arid Regions

The arid climate regions, such as in Riyadh city (Saudi Arabia), are characterized by strong dust storms which can deteriorate the performance of wireless systems. In addition, due to that the accelerated growth in many high buildings in a modern city such as Riyadh creates non-line of sight (NLOS) conditions can be represented by diffraction mechanism causes also attenuation loss affects the received wireless signals. This paper presents a new modelling study on the influence of dust storm and diffraction mechanism on wireless point to point (P-to-P) communication links in Riyadh. This unique study uses measured dust storm data and real urban scenarios to simulate the wireless links and investigate the effect on receiver performance based on the receiver sensitivity criterion. Several frequencies allocated for the fifth-generation (5G) wireless systems have been utilized as operation frequencies. The results showed that there is an inverse proportional between the attenuation loss due to diffraction and the distance over which the signal travels between the transmitter and receiver particularly when either the transmitter or the receiver is more close to the diffraction object. This study reveals that higher frequencies lead to higher diffraction loss, higher dust storm loss as well as higher free space loss. Moreover, certain millimeter-wave frequencies, such as 60 GHz, experience very high losses due to atmospheric absorption that can only operate on very short link distances. Besides, there is a need for high-quality receivers, especially for very high operating frequencies.