Empirical Comparison of Propagation Models for Relay-Based Networks in Urban Environments

Abstract

We investigate propagation characteristics for wireless channels, applicable to Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) and relay-based networks with lamppost-height nodes at 5.5 GHz. We compare our empirical results with a variety of models that have been proposed for system simulation. Our work is based on an extensive measurement campaign in an urban environment, where we simultaneously measured base-relay, relay-mobile and base-mobile links. This simultaneity allows us to conclude that low-height relay nodes offer a minor path-loss advantage over the base-user link. Moreover, within the range of relay heights that we measured of 2.8 and 4.7 m, we observed no significant gain associated with choosing the higher relay placement. Our results however also show that the base-relay link is quite stable over time and thus will lend itself to multi-antenna techniques requiring a small overhead in channel state information feedback. Our results add to the empirical data that the standards models are based on, providing path-loss results obtained simultaneously for all links of an urban relay-based system.