5G Radio Measurement Analysis

Abstract: The wireless smartphone success, applications and services that keep increasing nowadays, raise the demand to provide high bitrate; there is a need to find solutions for that requirement. 5G is the next generation networks that will provide data rates beyond 1Gbps. The aim of this master thesis is to analyze radio measurements gathered with a 5G radio prototype system operating at 15 GHz, which is one of the 5G frequency candidates. The focus of this thesis is to primarily search for different expected and unexpected radio propagation behaviors by comparing measurement results with existing models and characteristics of existing lower frequency bands. This has been done by modeling the blocking objects using MATLAB and mapping the results of the blocking model with the measurements gathered during the blocking. From the obtained results, it was found that the model response was moving close to the average of the measurement for reasonable estimation of the obstacles’ dimensions. The model was found to be sensitive to the height of the obstacles, especially those near the User Equipment (UE). The knife-edge diffraction model was verified and results were in close agreement with the measurements. The outcome of the channel estimate analysis is that the signal penetration varied behind the studied tree, depending on the density of the foliage. Channel gains for the co-polarized antennas at the Transmission Point (TP) and the UE were found to be 9 dB higher than channel gains for the cross-polarized antennas at the TP and the UE. Furthermore, the physical separation between antenna elements at the UE was observed on the MIMO paths when the average channel estimates during the road sign blocking were calculated and plotted.