Path Loss and Directional Gain Measurements at 28 GHz for Non-Line-of-Sight Coverage of Indoors with Corridors

Adequate coverage with high-gain antennas is a key to realizing the full promise of the bandwidth available at mm/cm wave bands. We report extensive indoor measurements at 28 GHz (1000 links, 9.9 million individual power measurements, 10 offices, 2 buildings), with/without line of sight (LOS) using a continuous wave channel sounder, with a 10° spinning horn, capable of capturing a full azimuth scan every 200 ms, in up to 171 dB path loss to characterize coverage with 90% confidence level. The environment had prominent corridors and rooms, as opposed to open/mixed offices in latest 3GPP standards. Guiding in corridors leads to much lower RMS azimuth spread (7° median in corridor non-LOS (NLOS) versus 42° in 3GPP) and higher penetration loss into rooms and around corners (30-32 dB, some 12 dB more loss than 3GPP at 20 m NLOS). Measured path gain in NLOS is predicted by a mode-diffusion model with 3.9 dB RMS error. Scattering degraded azimuth gain by up to 4 dB in the corridor and 7 dB in rooms with 90% probability. Link simulations in a canonical building indicate every corridor needs an access point to provide 1 Gb/s rate to adjoining rooms within 50 m using 400 MHz of bandwidth.