Modeling Human Blockers in Millimeter Wave Radio Links

In this paper, we investigate the loss caused by multiple humans blocking millimeter wave frequencies. We model human blockers as absorbing screens of infinite height with two knife-edges. We take a physical optics approach to computing the diffraction around the absorbing screens. This approach differs to the geometric optics approach described in much of the literature. The blocking model is validated by measuring the gain from multiple-human blocking configurations on an indoor link. The blocking gains predicted using Piazzi’s numerical integration method (a physical optics method) agree well with measurements taken from approximately 2.7 dB to -50 dB. Thereofre, this model is suitable for real human blockers. The mean prediction error for the method is approximately -1.2 dB, and the standard deviation is approximately 5 dB.