Outdoor-to-indoor coverage in high frequency bands

With the continuous growth in connected devices and the need for larger bandwidth channels and greater data speeds, operating at high frequencies can be advantageous for future mobile communications in general, and for 5G-networks in particular. In this paper, the indoor coverage at different high frequencies, namely 10, 30 and 60 GHz has been analyzed in the context of a single building scenario with an outdoor deployed base station and low load conditions. These specific frequencies are only meant as examples to illustrate the general trends of how coverage varies across the frequency range. A main observation, also subject to the assumptions made on propagation, antenna pattern and bandwidth size, is that outdoor to indoor coverage with down link (DL) user throughput higher than 10 Mbps, and in certain cases higher than 100 Mbps, is possible at 10 GHz and above. The case with carrier frequencies up to 30 GHz is more challenging however still manageable, whereas providing outdoor to indoor coverage at 60 GHz may be quite difficult for some building types. It has also been seen that the use of high gain antennas is crucial at high frequencies and that the deployment density depends on the type of building, in other words, on the exterior wall material, interior layout, wall material and building size.