Building Penetration Loss for Satellite Services at L-, S- and C-band: Measurement and Modeling

Abstract

An extensive measurement campaign, covering a representative set of typical buildings in an urban area and aimed at building penetration loss for satellite services at L-, S-and C-band, was performed in Prague in the summer of 2009. Throughout the measurements, a remote-controlled airship was used as a pseudosatellite carrying a transmitter which provided unmodulated continuous wave left-handed circularly polarized signals at 2.0 GHz, 3.5 GHz, 5.0 GHz, and 6.5 GHz. A description of the measurement campaign is provided here, together with a thorough analysis of the resulting experimental data. A significant dependence on elevation angle is reported for line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight propagation conditions separately. Subsequent steps to introduce elevation dependent empirical models at corresponding frequencies follow. Finally, a comparison to other studies dealing with building penetration loss for high elevation angles is presented.

First-Order Statistics Prediction for a Propagation Channel of Arbitrary Non-Geostationary Satellite Orbits

“…A remote-controlled airship carried a Tx, the same type as in [7], connected to an LHCP and an RHCP planar wideband antenna attached to a positioner enabling an instant pointing towards the receiver (Rx) location based on the airship GPS coordinates. Unmodulated continuous wave signals with a fixed output power of 27 dBm were transmitted at frequencies of 2.00106 GHz and 2.00086 GHz by the LHCP and RHCP antenna, respectively.…”

“…Unmodulated continuous wave signals with a fixed output power of 27 dBm were transmitted at frequencies of 2.00106 GHz and 2.00086 GHz by the LHCP and RHCP antenna, respectively. Unlike [7] and [12], to obtain the received signal levels of both the co-polarized and cross-polarized components of the transmitted signals, a dual-polarized rectangular patch antenna was connected by an H-hybrid and two power splitters to a sensitive, custom-made, four-channel receiver with a low noise floor of -126 dBm for a measurement bandwidth of 12.5 kHz. The receiver provided a 10-kHz sampling rate and its first two channels were tuned to 2.00106 GHz and the remaining two were tuned to 2.00086 GHz.…”

“…This has a strong influence on the corresponding satellite-to-Earth propagation channel as, based on user surroundings, the signal may be shadowed differently determined by the direction of the incoming signal. To predict such behavior, a number of various propagation channel models for different scenarios can be found in the literature, see for example [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Generally, such models need to be based on available experimental data; however, obtaining suitable experimental data is demanding.…”

“…Generally, such models need to be based on available experimental data; however, obtaining suitable experimental data is demanding. It is common to utilize a so-called pseudo-satellite which may be in a form of a transmitter (Tx) placed on a helicopter [9][10][11] or a remote-controlled airship [7], [12], [13], at a crane or the upper-most point in the surroundings for fixed-elevation measurements [14][15][16], or even collect data from an existing satellite [17][18][19].…”

“…Instead, respecting high costs of experimental campaigns when using a pseudosatellite, pre-defined flight paths, such as a star-pattern [7], circle [11], or hemisphere [10], are chosen for selected scenarios.…”