A Novel Wideband Space-Time Channel Measurement Method at 60 GHz

Abstract:
In this paper, we propose a novel channel sounding method at 60 GHz which employs a narrow band multi-channel digital array processor to achieve the wideband measurement by successive shifting of sounding signal blocks in the frequency domain. The measured sub-bands of narrow bandwidth are correctly composed to the wideband propagation channel (1 GHz measurement bandwidth) by deploying the developed channel synthesis strategy. The concept is extended to the space domain by utilizing the 1x4 patch array antenna. Through proper hardware design combined with software approaches, we can achieve complex-valued space-time channel measurement accurately replacing the costly rubidium reference and network analyzer. In this way, the proposed technique can be realized compactly in a cost-effective way. Furthermore, this method provides potential to be extended to a real-time dynamic channel measurement when a moderate digital signal processor would be used. We discuss some fundamental implementation aspects and the designed channel sounder is successfully examined by means of verification measurements.