Effect of Passive Reflectors for Enhancing Coverage of 28 GHz mmWave Systems in an Outdoor Setting

The availability of large unused spectrum at millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency bands has steered the future 5G research towards these bands. However, mmWave signals are attenuated severely in the non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios, thereby leaving the strong link quality by a large margin to line-of-sight (LOS) links. In this paper, a passive metallic reflector is used to enhance the coverage for mmWave signals in an outdoor, NLOS propagation scenarios. The received power from different azimuth and elevation angles are measured at 28 GHz in a parking lot setting. Our results show that using a 33 inch by 33 inch metallic reflector, the received power can be enhanced by 19 dB compared to no reflector case.

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