Indoor Channel Characterization and Performance Analysis of a 60 GHz near Gigabit System for WPAN Applications

During the last decade, substantial knowledge about the 60 GHz millimeter-wave (MMW) channel has been accumulated and different architectures have been analyzed to develop MMW communication systems for commercial applications. The 60 GHz bandwidth is suitable for high data-rate and short-distance wireless communications. This interest is particularly due to the large bandwidth and the important power loss caused by the free space and walls attenuation which permits to reuse the same frequency bandwidth even in the next floor of the same building. A high frequency band leads to a small size of RF components including antennas. However, many challenges have to be overcome before designing the system, such as the cost, millimeter-wave circuits and millimeter-wave propagation. For any wireless system design, the selection of a modulation and coding scheme is a main consideration and has a large impact on the system complexity. Problems such as power amplifier (PA) non-linearity, oscillator phase noise, insertion loss and flatness are more important for these RF circuits. These effects should be taken into account in the overall communication system. It was shown in (U. H. Rizvi et al., 2008) that single carrier (SC) transmission has a lower tolerance to phase noise and is more resistant to the PA nonlinearity than the multicarrier OFDM. Owing to these advantages, in (S. Kato et al., 2009), the authors proposed the single carrier (SC) transmission for multi-gigabit 60 GHz WPAN systems, as defined in IEEE 802.15.3C standard. Recently, the IEEE 802.15.3c, ECMA and Very High Throughput (VHT) groups were formed to normalize the future WPAN systems for the 60 GHz band (ECMA, 2008). Hence, different architectures have been analyzed to develop new MMW communication systems for commercial applications. Up to now, in the literature, several studies have considered propagation measurements, potential applications, circuit design issues and several modulation techniques at 60 GHz (P. Smulders, 2002). However, few efforts have been dedicated to the realization of a 60 GHz wireless system and the characterization of its performance in realistic environments.