Ball, E.A. orcid.org/0000-0002-6283-5949 and Joseph, S.D. orcid.org/0000-0001-9756-7596 (2023) A portable 28-GHz channel sounder platform and measurement results from close-to-ground field tests. IEEE Open Journal of Instrumentation and Measurement, 2 (2023). 8000111. ISSN 2768-7236
Abstract
This article describes a novel, bespoke, and low-cost 28-GHz RF TX and RX front end design that has been combined with a commercial Software-Defined Radio and Raspberry Pi controller to realize a portable propagation measurement system for the 28-GHz band. The complete sounder system can resolve an impulse from RX powers down to −107 dBm (3-dB impulse SNR) and the sounder TX can generate a signal of −8 dBm. Therefore, using 20-dBi antennas supports path-loss (PL) measurements of 139 dB. The sounder can resolve time-domain reflections to 33 ns in a channel measurement bandwidth of 60 MHz, producing both time-domain and frequency-domain results. The complete sounding system has been used to perform close-to-ground RF channel measurements, with propagation loss models and time-domain impulses extracted. Close-to-ground measurement is an underreported area of propagation research that is relevant for novel use-cases, such as in military applications or for mobile device-to-device communications. A key initial finding from the trials is that the PLs for 28-GHz indoor and outdoor links at circa 70 cm above ground seem close to that of free space, with very few strong reflections with delays exceeding 33 ns.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Loss measurement; Antenna measurements; Delays; Radio frequency; Millimeter wave communication; Transceivers; UHF measurements |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number UK Research and Innovation MR/T043164/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 Jul 2023 13:59 |
Last Modified: | 24 Jul 2023 13:59 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1109/ojim.2023.3259025 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:201811 |