Path loss study for millimeter wave device-to-device communications in urban environment

In the recent years the millimeter wave spectrum is being explored as a prospective band for the next generation (5G) cellular communications. In this paper we study the propagation of the the millimetre wave spectrum using ray tracing model for an urban environment. We consider the ISM bands in 24GHz and 61GHz in particular and conduct ray tracing simulations to study the path loss behaviour in terms of the path loss exponent and the shadowing variance for both Line of Sight and Non Line of Sight conditions. As a potential application we examine the device to device (D2D) communication, which is currently being developed for LTE-A standard. The resulting pathloss exponents and the shadow variances are presented here based on ray tracing simulations for an ITU-R statistical urban model, moreover this paper shows that intelligent beam steering can significantly improve the throughput for the considered D2D scenarios.