Measurement Based Study of Commercial 5G Frequencies in Urban Macro Cellular Environment

Propagation characteristics of different frequency bands have a fundamental impact on the network planning aspects of practical cellular systems. A reasonable understanding of the radio propagation characteristics is already established and well-known large-scale propagation models are available for sub-6 GHz frequencies of operation. However, it is not true for a commercially available band of 26 GHz for fifth-generation (5G) of mobile systems in Europe, and better and accurate path loss models are required. In this research work, we carried out comprehensive continuous wave (CW) channel measurements at three potential 5G frequencies i.e., 1.9 GHz, 3.8 GHz, and 26 GHz in the city of Porvoo, Finland. The existing macrocellular base station (BS) site location is utilized during the measurement campaign. The large bandwidth available at 26 GHz makes it a feasible solution for fixed wireless access (FWA). The coverage achievable by these three bands was evaluated by fitting the alpha-beta-gamma (ABG) and close-in (CI) free space model to the measured path loss. This paper presents a link budget with practical considerations for different frequencies. In the light of acquired results, uplink (UL) is found coverage limited at all considered frequencies, and the attained results highlight the possibility of using 26 GHz band for FWA. Although, the outdoor-to-indoor service provisioning is challenging, however, interestingly it is found that around 1 kilometer and half kilometer coverage can be achieved in downlink (DL) at 26 GHz frequency for the use case of FWA and mobile users, respectively, in an outdoor environment.