Measurements and ray tracing simulations: Impact of different antenna positions on meeting room coverage at 60 GHz

We consider the indoor signal propagation at mmWave frequency in an office environment. While channel measurements are widely used to give insights on the propagation phenomena, the use of measurements for the wireless system performance evaluation is limited. In contrary, carefully executed Ray Tracing (RT) simulations represent easier and more flexible option, but careful validation of simulation methodology is needed. The target of this paper is to highlight the use of an in-house built RT tool at 60 GHz, and show the effectiveness of simulations in predicting different characteristics of the channel by validating the simulation results against measurements. The acquired results highlight the impact of type and position of the transmit antenna on the path loss and spatial angular impulse response of the channel in a typical meeting room scenario. In first configuration, the antenna is placed in the middle of the table, while in second configuration the transmit antenna is located in the corner of the meeting room. We have studied the channel characteristics with respect to two Receiver (Rx) antenna orientations i.e., Direct Orientation (DO) and the Best Indirect Orientation (BIO). In first configuration, the observed RMS error between the measured and the simulated Path Loss (PL) is around 2.6 dB and 2.9 dB in case of DO and BIO, respectively. The acquired simulated results also indicate few discrepancies in the measurement results in case of second configuration. Delay spread of first configuration was found smaller compared to the second configuration.