Directional Delay Spread and Interference Quotient Analysis in sub-7GHz Wi-Fi bands

Delay dispersion is one of the key propagation channel characteristics that impact system design and performance. In particular, for OFDM-based systems such as Wi-Fi, it determines both the amount of available frequency diversity and the minimum required cyclic prefix, which in turn impacts the spectral efficiency. For this reason, delay spread and power delay profiles have been analyzed for a long time. However, recent upgrades in Wi-Fi, in particular the addition of a new frequency range (6-7.1 GHz), and the introduction of adaptive beamforming, require a re-assessment based on new measurements. This paper presents extensive measurement results of RMS delay spread and interference quotient that take these developments into account. Results were measured in the 2.4-2.5, 5-6, and 6-7 GHz bands. Furthermore, we compare the “omni-directional” delay spread and interference quotient (i.e., when measured with omni-antennas at transmitter and receiver), to those that occur when beamformed antennas are used. We found that for both outdoor and indoor environments, beamforming typically improves the interference quotient (for a given window size) by about 3-5 dB. The 2.4 and 5-7 GHz bands show a significant difference, while we could not observe statistically significant differences between the 5-6 and 6-7 GHz bands.