Development & tuning of indoor propagation model for 3.5 GHz band

Field of study: Electrical engineering/ Telecommunications

Background:

KPN is currently rolling out the 5G network to achieve national coverage. For this KPN uses 700 MHz spectrum to offer 5G services to its customers.

For specific indoor solutions, KPN currently uses 2100 MHz spectrum for offering 5G services. As this spectrum is dynamically shared with 4G, there is limited capacity and bandwidth available for 5G to achieve higher data rates. 

With the availability of the new 3.5 GHz spectrum this year, which offers large capacity and high communication speeds, opportunities arise for KPN to enable new 5G services at indoor locations. Not only in office environments, but also at production locations, such as the operation of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) for smart production logistics.

Ensuring good 5G indoor radio coverage and capacity for indoor users will therefore be an important topic for KPN in the near future.

Activities:

To be able to dimension indoor networks more accurately, a good propagation model is indispensable. With an accurate prediction model, KPN is able to properly estimate in advance how many indoor antennas are needed to meet a certain coverage requirement.

KPN indoor radio planners use the iBWave simulation tool to design such indoor installations. Whether this simulation tool is accurate enough for the planning of indoor installations at 3.5 GHz still needs to be verified in practice.

The assignment concerns the following activities to be carried out:

  • Literature study of what is currently available for indoor propagation models for the 3.5 GHz band.
  • Based on the results of literature research, develop the theoretical propagation model for 3.5 GHz band on which indoor installations can be accurately RF planned and calculated.
  • Build a test set-up in KPN's RF lab for pathloss measurements for 3.5 GHz band (KPN has measurement equipment such as 3.5 GHz transmitter, Scanner, etc..).
  • Test the theoretically developed propagation model in practice by means of performing measurements in both test and live environment.
  • Compare the results obtained with the developed propagation model with simulation results from the iBWave tool.
  • Document the research results in an easily readable report.