Frequencies from 100 GHz to 3 THz are promising bands for the next generation of wireless communication systems because of the wide swaths of unused and unexplored spectrum. These frequencies also offer the potential for revolutionary applications that will be made possible by new thinking, and advances in devices, circuits, software, signal processing, and systems. This paper describes many of the technical challenges and opportunities for wireless communication and sensing applications above 100 GHz, and presents a number of promising discoveries, novel approaches, and recent results that will aid in the development and implementation of the sixth generation (6G) of wireless networks, and beyond. This paper shows recent regulatory and standard body rulings that are anticipating wireless products and services above 100 GHz and illustrates the viability of wireless cognition, hyper-accurate position location, sensing, and imaging. This paper also presents approaches and results that show how long distance mobile communications will be supported to above 800 GHz since the antenna gains are able to overcome air-induced attenuation, and present methods that reduce the computational complexity and simplify the signal processing used in adaptive antenna arrays, by exploiting the Special Theory of Relativity to create a cone of silence in over-sampled antenna arrays that improve performance for digital phased array antennas. Also, new results that give insights into power efficient beam steering algorithms, and new propagation and partition loss models above 100 GHz are given, and promising imaging, array processing, and position location results are presented. The implementation of spatial consistency at THz frequencies, an important component of channel modeling that considers minute changes and correlations over space, is also discussed. This paper offers the first in-depth look at the vast applications of THz wireless products and applications and provides approaches for how to reduce power and increase performance across several problem domains, giving early evidence that THz techniques are compelling and available for future wireless communications.

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Wireless Communications and Applications Above 100 GHz: Opportunities and Challenges for 6G and Beyond

The demand for wireless mobile communications services is growing at an explosive rate, with the anticipation that communication to a mobile device anywhere on the globe at all times will be available in the near future. An array of antennas mounted on vehicles, ships, aircraft, satellites, and base stations is expected to play an important role in fulfilling the increased demand of channel requirement for these services, as well as for the realization of the dream that a portable communications device the size of a wristwatch be available at an affordable cost for such services. This paper is the first of a two-part study. It provides a comprehensive treatment, at a level appropriate to nonspecialists, of the use of an antenna array to enhance the efficiency of mobile communications systems. It presents an overview of mobile communications as well as details of how an array may be used in various mobile communications systems, including land-mobile, indoor-radio, and satellite-based systems. It discusses advantages of an array of antennas in a mobile communications system, highlights improvements that are possible by using multiple antennas compared to a single antenna in a system, and provides details on the feasibility of antenna arrays for mobile communications applications.

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Applications of antenna arrays to mobile communications. I. Performance improvement, feasibility, and system considerations

Ultra-wideband millimeter-wave (mmWave) propagation measurements were conducted in the 28- and 73-GHz frequency bands in a typical indoor office environment in downtown Brooklyn, New York, on the campus of New York University. The measurements provide large-scale path loss and temporal statistics that will be useful for ultra-dense indoor wireless networks for future mmWave bands. This paper presents the details of measurements that employed a 400 Megachips-per-second broadband sliding correlator channel sounder, using rotatable highly directional horn antennas for both co-polarized and crosspolarized antenna configurations. The measurement environment was a closed-plan in-building scenario that included a line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight corridor, a hallway, a cubicle farm, and adjacent-room communication links. Well-known and new single-frequency and multi-frequency directional and omnidirectional large-scale path loss models are presented and evaluated based on more than 14 000 directional power delay profiles acquired from unique transmitter and receiver antenna pointing angle combinations. Omnidirectional path loss models, synthesized from the directional measurements, are provided for the case of arbitrary polarization coupling, aswell as for the specific cases of co-polarized and cross-polarized antenna orientations. The results show that novel large-scale path loss models provided here are simpler and more physically based compared to previous 3GPP and ITU indoor propagation models that require more model parameters and offer very little additional accuracy and lack a physical basis. Multipath time dispersion statistics formmWave systems using directional antennas are presented for co-polarization, crosspolarization, and combined-polarization scenarios, and show that the multipath root mean square delay spread can be reduced when using transmitter and receiver antenna pointing angles that result in the strongest received power. Raw omnidirectional path loss data and closed-form optimization formulas for all path loss models are given in the Appendices.

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Indoor Office Wideband Millimeter-Wave Propagation Measurements and Channel Models at 28 and 73 GHz for Ultra-Dense 5G Wireless Networks

This paper contains measured data and empirical models for 5.85-GHz radio propagation path loss in and around residential areas for the newly allocated U.S. National Information Infrastructure (NII) band. Three homes and two stands of trees were studied for outdoor path loss, tree loss, and house penetration loss in a narrow-band measurement campaign that included 270 local area path loss measurements and over 276000 instantaneous power measurements. Outdoor transmitters at a height of 5.5 m were placed at distances between 30 and 210 m from the homes, to simulate typical neighborhood base stations mounted atop utility poles. All path loss data are presented graphically and coupled with site-specific information. We develop measurement-based path loss models for propagation prediction. The measurements and models may aid the development of futuristic outdoor-to-indoor residential communication systems for wireless Internet access, wireless cable distribution, and wireless local loops.

Measurements and models for radio path loss and penetration loss in and around homes and trees at 5.85 GHz

This paper contains measured data and empirical models for 2.5 and 60 GHz in-building propagation path loss and multipath delay spread. Path loss measurements were recorded using a broadband sliding correlator channel sounder which recorded over 39000 power delay profiles (PDPs) in 22 separate locations in a modern office building. Transmitters and receivers were separated by distances ranging from 3.5 to 27.4 m and were separated by a variety of obstructions, in order to create realistic environments for future single-cell-per-room wireless networks. Path loss data is coupled with site-specific information to provide insight into channel characteristics. These measurements and models may aid in the development of future in-building wireless networks in the unlicensed 2.4 and 60 GHz bands.

In-building wideband partition loss measurements at 2.5 and 60 GHz

For indoor wireless communication systems, radio frequency (RF) transceivers need to be placed strategically to achieve optimum communication coverage at the lowest cost. Unfortunately, the coverage region for a transceiver depends heavily on the type of building and on the placement of walls within the building. Traditionally, therefore, transceiver locations have been selected by human experts who rely on experience and heuristics to obtain the optimum (or near-optimum) placement. This paper describes an interactive software system that can be used to assist in transceiver placement. It is intended to be easy to use by individuals who are not experts at wireless communication system design. After the user has selected transceiver locations within a graphical floor plan, the system interprets the floor plan and uses simple path loss models to estimate coverage regions for each transceiver. These regions are highlighted, enabling the user to assess the total coverage. This paper describes the methodology used to compute the coverage regions for multifloored buildings and discusses the effect of interference sources. The resulting system is expected to be useful in the specification of indoor wireless systems.

Interactive computation of coverage regions for wireless communication in multifloored indoor environments

This paper presents an approach to modeling indoor wireless communication systems using statistical path loss prediction calculations. The statistical calculations work with an indoor building database to accurately predict path loss and interference (C/I) values with much less computational complexity than brute force ray tracing methods. This paper describes the algorithms and illustrates typical coverage contours provided by the resulting indoor planning tool called SMT Plus/sup TM/. This paper also describes techniques under development to incorporate measurements in order to further improve the accuracy of the statistical models, as well as several future directions for SMT Plus.

A.L. Abbott

Papers

Interactive computation of coverage regions for wireless communication in multifloored indoor environments

Interactive coverage region and system design simulation for wireless communication systems in multifloored indoor environments: SMT Plus