Empirical Effects of Dynamic Human-Body Blockage in 60 GHz Communications

Abstract

The millimeter wave (mmWave) bands and other high frequencies above 6 GHz have emerged as a central component of Fifth-Generation (5G) cellular standards to deliver high data rates and ultra-low latency. A key challenge in these bands is blockage from obstacles, including the human body. In addition to the reduced coverage, blockage can result in highly intermittent links where the signal quality varies significantly with motion of obstacles in the environment. The blockages have widespread consequences throughout the protocol stack including beam tracking, link adaptation, cell selection, handover and congestion control. Accurately modeling these blockage dynamics is therefore critical for the development and evaluation of potential mmWave systems. In this work, we present a novel spatial dynamic channel sounding system based on phased array transmitters and receivers operating at 60 GHz. Importantly, the sounder can measure multiple directions rapidly at high speed to provide detailed spatial dynamic measurements of complex scenarios. The system is demonstrated in an indoor home-entertainment type setting with multiple moving blockers. Preliminary results are presented on analyzing this data with a discussion of the open issues towards developing statistical dynamic models.

Message Passing-Based Link Configuration in Short Range Millimeter Wave Systems

“…The N N RF × N channel matrix H is computed using the geometricray-based approach in [26]. Investigating the performance of our algorithm with more realistic channel models, which account for blockage and spatio-temporal channel dynamics [27], is an interesting research direction. For each combination of antennas at the AP and the STA, the geometric approach in [26] considers three kinds of propagation rays.…”

Adaptive Sum of Markov Chains for Modelling 3D Blockage in mmWave V2I Communications

“…Dynamic blockages, such as moving people, cars, and buses, cause rapid fluctuations in the mmWave channel, leading to rapid reductions in the signal strength of up to 30-40 dB [8]. Therefore, accurate modelling of the dynamics of blockage is essential for developing reliable transceivers for mmWave systems [9]. The authors of [9] introduce a novel spatial dynamic channel sounding system at a frequency of 60 GHz.…”

“…Therefore, accurate modelling of the dynamics of blockage is essential for developing reliable transceivers for mmWave systems [9]. The authors of [9] introduce a novel spatial dynamic channel sounding system at a frequency of 60 GHz. Moreover, based on the results in [10], [11], the authors propose that dynamic blockage plays an important role in the engineering design of mmWave cellular systems.…”

Modelling the Effect of Human Body around User on Signal Strength and Accuracy of Indoor Positioning

“…The people detection and tracking system can be constructed using this effect [19]. The attenuation of WLAN signals in the 60 GHz affected by human blockage has been measured by Koda et al [26] and Slezak et al [27]. Then to reduce the variation of RSSI and the error of position estimation caused by the human activity, Booranawong et al [18] proposed filtering methods.…”