Measurements and Characterization for Millimeter-Wave Massive MIMO Channel in High-Speed Railway Station Environment at 28 GHz

The millimeter-wave (mmWave) and massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication technologies provide vital means to resolve many technical challenges of the fifth-generation (5G) or beyond 5G (B5G) network. Analyzing the measured datasets extracted from the channel measurements can provide insight into the characteristics of radio channels in different scenarios. Therefore, mmWave massive MIMO channel measurements, simulation, and modeling are carried out in the high-speed railway waiting hall environments at 28 GHz. The multipath components (MPCs) parameters are estimated for line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios based on the space-alternating generalized expectation-maximization (SAGE) algorithm. Delay spread (DS), azimuth angle of arrival (AAoA), and elevation angle of arrival (EAoA) are analyzed. And they are processed by using the K-mean algorithm. In addition, propagation characteristics are simulated based on the improved ray tracing method of shooting and bouncing ray tracing/image (SBR/IM). The correctness of the improved ray tracing method is verified by comparing the measured results with the simulated results. The large-scale path loss (PL) is characterized based on close-in (CI) free-space reference distance model and the floating-intercept (FI) path loss model. Furthermore, statistical distributions for root-mean-square delay spread (RMS DS) are investigated. The Gaussian distribution best fits the measured data of RMS delay spread. Finally, multipath clustering is identified using the multipath component distance (MCD). The analysis of these results from mmWave massive MIMO channel measurements and simulation may be instructive for the deployment of the 5G or B5G wireless communications systems at 28 GHz.