Attenuation of Several Common Building Materials: Millimeter-Wave Frequency Bands 28, 73, and 91 GHz

Future cellular systems will make use of millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency bands. Many users in these bands are located indoors, i.e., inside buildings, homes, and offices. Typical building material attenuations in these high frequency ranges are of interest for link budget calculations. In this paper, we report on a collaborative measurement campaign to find the attenuation of several typical building materials in three potential mmWave bands (28, 73, 91 GHz). Using directional antennas, we took multiple measurements at multiple locations using narrow-band and wide-band signals, and averaged out residual small-scale fading effects. Materials include clear glass, drywall (plasterboard), plywood, acoustic ceiling tile, and cinder blocks. Specific attenuations range from approximately 0.5 dB/cm for ceiling tile at 28 GHz to approximately 19 dB/cm for clear glass at 91 GHz.

[1]  Ismail Güvenç,et al.  Coverage Enhancement for mm Wave Communications using Passive Reflectors , 2018, 2018 11th Global Symposium on Millimeter Waves (GSMM).

[2]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  Indoor Wireless Channel Properties at Millimeter Wave and Sub-Terahertz Frequencies , 2019, 2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM).

[3]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  Millimeter Wave Mobile Communications for 5G Cellular: It Will Work! , 2013, IEEE Access.

[4]  Ismail Güvenç,et al.  Effect of Passive Reflectors for Enhancing Coverage of 28 GHz mmWave Systems in an Outdoor Setting , 2018, 2019 IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium (RWS).

[5]  Seppo Horsmanheimo,et al.  Window and wall penetration loss on-site measurements with three methods , 2018 .

[6]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  28 GHz millimeter wave cellular communication measurements for reflection and penetration loss in and around buildings in New York city , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC).

[7]  Gilbert Moïsio,et al.  International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector , 2014 .

[8]  Hani Mehrpouyan,et al.  Indoor and Outdoor Penetration Loss Measurements at 73 and 81 GHz , 2019, 2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM).

[9]  Rodolfo Feick,et al.  Suburban Residential Building Penetration Loss at 28 GHz for Fixed Wireless Access , 2018, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters.

[10]  Osamu Hashimoto,et al.  Three-layer wave absorber using common building material for wireless LAN , 2004 .

[11]  Hani Mehrpouyan,et al.  Millimeter-Wave Path Loss at 73 GHz in Indoor and Outdoor Airport Environments , 2019, 2019 IEEE 90th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2019-Fall).

[12]  Il-Yong Lee,et al.  Measurements of Window Penetration Loss and Building Entry Loss from 3.5 to 24 GHz , 2019, 2019 13th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP).

[13]  Hani Mehrpouyan,et al.  60-GHz Millimeter-Wave Pathloss Measurements in Boise Airport , 2018, 2018 IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP).

[14]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  Wireless communications - principles and practice , 1996 .

[15]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  Indoor office wideband penetration loss measurements at 73 GHz , 2017, 2017 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC Workshops).

[16]  David W. Matolak,et al.  Wide band channel characterization for low altitude unmanned aerial system communication using software defined radios , 2018, 2018 Integrated Communications, Navigation, Surveillance Conference (ICNS).

[17]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  In-building wideband partition loss measurements at 2.5 and 60 GHz , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[18]  Mikko Valkama,et al.  Impact of Different Concrete Types on Radio Propagation: Fundamentals and Practical RF Measurements , 2019, 2019 4th International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies (SpliTech).