UWB propagation channels within an aircraft and an office building environment

Path loss at higher distances is much higher for NLOS in the office due to solid walls in the propagation path. In LOS, the results are converging with increasing distance. In our indoor campaign, these large distances can only be found on corridors. At small distances the path loss is about 10 dB less in the aircraft than in the office for all frequencies, which can also be observed in PL₀. The delay spread is higher in the aircraft but converges with the LOS configuration in the office. However, the maximum excess delay is smaller for indoor LOS. This leads to the conclusion that the UWB channel in the aircraft fuselage is comparable to an indoor corridor with one important difference: there are much more relevant multi path contributions in the received signal than in office environment mainly caused by metal structures in the aircraft cabin. Strong reflecting environments lead to a limitation of data rate in single carrier systems. It can be exploited best by OFDM- and MIMO technologies with an appropriate system design. So UWB technology would be very suitable for this environment.