UWB Propagation Measurements and Modelling in Large Indoor Environments

Abstract

In this paper, we present the results of the measurements and modeling of the propagation channel for ultra wide band (UWB) communications in large indoor environments. The selected environment is a sports center of large dimensions ( 51 \times 26 m, 7.4m height) without intermediate obstacles so that there is always direct path (DP) between TX and RX and UWB technology can be used for critical communications of sensors. On this environment, narrow band and ultra wide band measurements have been made with a high resolution pulse channel sounder (8ns) at the nominal frequency of 3.9 GHz. Narrow band measurements have been used to model path loss for the DP, while for UWB measurements, the power delay profile have been used to obtain the statistics of the multipath of the channel. Combining both models has been possible to obtain a detailed characterization of the environment. The results constitute a complete characterization of this type of indoor environments for UWB signals and can be easily extrapolated to other environments with similar characteristics, allowing the use of UWB technology for applications of critical communications for sensors and other devices.