Investigation into the effects of polarization in the indoor mmWave environment

Recently a measurement campaign was performed and a subsequent channel model proposal was created for an indoor office environment at 73 GHz. The channel model included a detailed modeling of polarization which was designed to capture the expected effects of polarization observed in the literature. Using this new channel model we perform a study of how polarization impacts the performance of an indoor millimeterwave (mmWave) communication system in a small-office environment. Particular emphasis is given to having only a single polarization at both ends of the link. The impact of polarization on large-scale fading, such as angle spread, channel rank, and system-level performance is considered. Results show that some polarization combinations at each end of the link can increase the delay and angle spreads while other combinations can decrease the spread. Results also show the importance of having mixed polarization types at both ends of the link (e.g., circular on one end and linear on the other) when each end has a single polarization type.