Investigations on Millimeter-Wave Indoor Channel Simulations for 5G Networks

Due to the extensively accessible bandwidth of many tens of GHz, millimeter-wave (mmWave) and sub-terahertz (THz) frequencies are anticipated to play a significant role in 5G and 6G wireless networks and beyond. This paper presents investigations on mmWave bands within the indoor environment based on extensive simulations; the study considers the behavior of the omnidirectional and directional propagation characteristics, including path loss exponents (PLE) delay spread (DS), the number of clusters, and the number of rays per cluster at different frequencies (28 GHz, 39 GHz, 60 GHz and 73 GHz) in both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) propagation scenarios. This study finds that the PLE and DS show dependency on frequency; it was also found that, in NLOS scenarios, the number of clusters follows a Poisson distribution, while, in LOS, it follows a decaying exponential distribution. This study enhances understanding of the indoor channel behavior at different frequency bands within the same environment, as many research papers focus on single or two bands; this paper considers four frequency bands. The simulation is important as it provides insights into omnidirectional channel behavior at different frequencies, essential for indoor channel planning.