Wideband Penetration Loss through Building Materials and Partitions at 6.75 GHz in FR1(C) and 16.95 GHz in the FR3 Upper Mid-band spectrum
The 4--8 GHz FR1(C) and 7--24 GHz upper mid-band FR3 spectrum are promising new 6G spectrum allocations being considered by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and major governments around the world. There is an urgent need to understand the propagation behavior and radio coverage, outage, and material penetration for the global mobile wireless industry in both indoor and outdoor environments in these emerging frequency bands. This work presents measurements and models that describe the penetration loss in co-polarized and cross-polarized antenna configurations, exhibited by common materials found inside buildings and on building perimeters, including concrete, low-emissivity glass, wood, doors, drywall, and whiteboard at 6.75 GHz and 16.95 GHz. Measurement results show consistent lower penetration loss at 6.75 GHz compared to 16.95 GHz for all ten materials measured for co and cross-polarized antennas at incidence. For instance, the low-emissivity glass wall presents 33.7 dB loss at 6.75 GHz, while presenting 42.3 dB loss at 16.95 GHz. Penetration loss at these frequencies is contrasted with measurements at sub-6 GHz, mmWave and sub-THz frequencies along with 3GPP material penetration loss models. The results provide critical knowledge for future 5G and 6G cellular system deployments as well as refinements for the 3GPP material penetration models.
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