In this paper, the influence of tree trunks, cylindrical street furniture such as lamp posts, and traffic on ray tracing simulations in an urban scenario is analyzed. Tree trunks and lamp posts are modeled by cylinders and propagation characteristics computed according to the Uniform Theory of Diffraction. The influence of traffic is analyzed by simulations with moving vehicles. In order to get an understanding of the spatial characteristics of the channel, simulations with static and also mobile receivers have been performed, in line with a measurement campaign in the same environment. The simulation results show a good agreement with the measurements.

Various wireless applications are currently under development for the unlicensed 60 GHz band. This paper describes three examples with different system requirements. The first two are point-to-multipoint wireless networks (in an airplane and in a car) and the third one is a short range point-to-point connection. Special requirements of the applications are a high number of users for the point-to-multipoint connection and a high data rate of 10 Gbit/s for the point-to-point connection system. Implementation aspects are pointed out, which are important to demonstrate the functionality of the system in a relevant environment and are key aspects to develop the related products. For example, integration aspects of the antenna into an airplane passenger seat and the receiver concept of the radio frequency-(RF) front-end to reducing the power consumption at ultrahigh data rates are described. Additionally, to determine the geometrical system architecture, ray-tracing simulations inside an aircraft and inside a car were performed.

This article presents measurement and analysis results for 60 GHz short-range wideband radio channels. We consider two scenarios, referred to as “very-high-rate extended-range” (VHR-E) and “ultra-high-rate cordless” (UHR-C). The VHR-E measurements aimed at 60 GHz fixed networks for an Airbus A340 cabin both under static and dynamic (shadowing due to passenger movement) channel conditions. We describe the channel sounder used for the VHR-E measurements and present a simple multipath model derived from the measurements. Furthermore, simulations show the feasibility of the ray-tracing approach for this kind of channel. As a typical UHR-C use case, a data kiosk scenario was investigated. Various propagation conditions are analyzed with respect to channel gain, time dispersion, and frequency selectivity.

The large bandwidth of the 60 GHz frequency band enables wireless short-range applications with data rates of several Gbit/s. The German project EASY-A has focused on early prototype implementations for selected applications, although no generally accepted 60 GHz standard has been available at the time. The implementations are based on application-oriented physical layer designs and link-budget investigations that account for the scenario-specific channel characteristics and for different integration technologies. This paper discusses the results of these investigations and details the hardware implementation of the digital baseband processing that relies on considerable parallelization. The link-budget results show that SiGe technology allows for 1 Gbit/s at a range of 3.5 m in non-line-of-sight environments, while up to 10 Gbit/s are feasible at more than 1 m in case of strong line of sight.