Wireless channel analysis between 25 and 40 GHz in an intra-wagon environment for 5G using a ray-tracing tool

Abstract

Metro and railway systems are one of the most used transportation systems for people in almost all countries. Nevertheless, the access to high throughput wireless services is still very limited inside the wagons (cars). A deep analysis of the wireless channel inside wagons is needed to deploy new efficient and high throughput networks as the ones provided by fifth-generation (5G) systems. Although several works have analyzed the intrawagon channel, some limitations are usually present: only certain user equipment-access point situations were considered, the number of studied propagation mechanisms was limited, and only some channel parameters were extracted. For these reasons, in this work the wireless channel in an intra-wagon environment is thoroughly analyzed using simulations performed with a ray-tracing tool calibrated and validated with wideband measurements. Thanks to the accurate ray-tracing tool the main replicas are identified in different typical user equipment-access point positions; the contribution of each propagation mechanism to the total power is extracted; and the angular spread in azimuth and elevation for the direction of arrival and departure are obtained. This analysis is performed in the frequency range from 25 to 40 GHz, where spectrum for several 5G bands has been already allocated.