Dust Storm and Diffraction Modelling for 5G Spectrum Wireless Fixed Links in Arid Regions

Abstract

The arid climate regions, such as in Riyadh city (Saudi Arabia), are characterized by strong dust storms which can deteriorate the performance of wireless systems. In addition, due to that the accelerated growth in many high buildings in a modern city such as Riyadh creates non-line of sight (NLOS) conditions can be represented by diffraction mechanism causes also attenuation loss affects the received wireless signals. This paper presents a new modelling study on the influence of dust storm and diffraction mechanism on wireless point to point (P-toP) communication links in Riyadh. This unique study uses measured dust storm data and real urban scenarios to simulate the wireless links and investigate the effect on receiver performance based on the receiver sensitivity criterion. Several frequencies allocated for the fifth-generation (5G) wireless systems have been utilized as operation frequencies. The results showed that there is an inverse proportional between the attenuation loss due to diffraction and the distance over which the signal travels between the transmitter and receiver particularly when either the transmitter or the receiver is more close to the diffraction object. This study reveals that higher frequencies lead to higher diffraction loss, higher dust storm loss as well as higher free space loss. Moreover, certain millimeter-wave frequencies, such as 60 GHz, experience very high losses due to atmospheric absorption that can only operate on very short link distances. Besides, there is a need for high-quality receivers, especially for very high operating frequencies.

Rainfall and Diffraction Modeling for Millimeter-Wave Wireless Fixed Systems

“…3 has been built and can be briefly explained as follows. First, the PPT communication system specifications including transmitter and receiver parameters have been determined with the assistance of Nautel Radio Coverage tool [17,37,38]. Second, the propagation channel is defined such that it can be considered the worst-case in which it is assumed that the signal received by the KAFD receiver antenna experiences rain attenuation and free space path loss.…”

“…3 and 6, while ℎ , ℎ , and ℎ denote heights of the KED difrraction (KT), the Tx, and the Rx, correspondingly. Additionally, 1 and 2 are the angles, in rad, between the knife-edge of the tower (KT) and each antenna of the Tx and Rx end when seen from the other end, while is the angle of KED in rad [19,43,17]. As illustrated in Fig.…”

“…As a result, we can claim that the Rx is located in the shadow area behind the KT tower. With the understanding that the Rx is situated in the diffraction zone or what we called "shadowed region", the strength of the electrical E-field at the receiver is the addition of all fields, as vectors, caused by secondary Huygen's wavelets in the plane above the KED at the diffraction twoer [17]. The E-field due to the diffracted path, , can be expressed by the diffraction integral:…”

“…Various millimeter-wave spectrum bands allocated for 5G communication systems (such as Ka and mmWave bands) have been employed for achieving the main purpose of this study. Receiver sensitivity has been assumed for all frequency bands [17,46,47] to be -103 dBm.…”

“…In addition to the abovementioned signal impairments, signal fading loss caused by a knife-edge diffraction (KED) mechanism is another factor that can influence signal propagation, but a recent study [17] has been conducted between dust storms and diffraction mechanism. However, no previous studies combine diffraction with rainfall attenuation even the new Matlab-based channel simulator named NYUSIM, which is being developed by New York University (NYU) and NYU WIRELESS center, does not include the diffraction model in the simulation procedures [18].…”