Impact of diffraction and attenuation for material characterisation in millimetre wave bands

This paper presents an early stage of developing an outdoor propagation model in millimetre wave bands and consider developing electrical parameters for building materials at 45GHz. Sample materials for building have been chosen for investigation in term of diffraction and attenuation as a mean of extracting true attenuation properties. Results for diffraction are validated against a Knife Edge Diffraction model; the effect of the sample size/thickness investigated and finally the attenuation for both concrete and wood sample are presented, showing concrete attenuation at 4.38 dB/cm and solid wood at 2.42 dB/cm at horizontal-horizontal polarization and at vertical-vertical polarization of 4.64 dB/cm and 4.19 dB/cm respectively. Towards the end of this research, the materials parameters will be embedded in a 3D ray tracer simulator for outdoor propagation modelling.