Path loss measurement and modeling of 5G network in emergency indoor stairwell at 3.7 and 28 GHz

PLoS One. 2023 Mar 28;18(3):e0282781. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282781. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Research on path loss in indoor stairwells for 5G networks is currently insufficient. However, the study of path loss in indoor staircases is essential for managing network traffic quality under typical and emergency conditions and for localization purpose. This study investigated radio propagation on a staircase where a wall separated the stairs from free space. A horn and an omnidirectional antenna were used to determine path loss. The measured path loss evaluated the close-in-free-space reference distance, alpha-beta model, close-in-free-space reference distance with frequency weighting, and alpha-beta-gamma model. These four models exhibited good compatibility with the measured average path loss. However, comparing the path loss distributions of the projected models revealed that the alpha-beta model exhibited 1.29 dB and 6.48 dB for respectively, at 3.7 GHz and 28 GHz bands. Furthermore, the path loss standard deviations obtained in this study were smaller than those reported in previous studies.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) under Grant 2021R1A2C1010370. There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.