A Channel Measurement Campaign for mmWave Communication in Industrial Settings

Abstract

Industry 4.0 relies heavily on wireless technologies. Energy efficiency and device cost have played a significant role in the initial design of such wireless systems for industry automation. However, high reliability, high throughput, and low latency are also key for certain sectors such as the manufacturing industry. In this sense, existing wireless solutions for industrial settings are limited. Emerging technologies such as millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication are highly promising to address this bottleneck. Still, the propagation characteristics at such high frequencies in harsh industrial settings are not well understood. Related work in this area is limited to isolated measurements in specific scenarios. In this work, we carry out an extensive measurement campaign in highly representative industrial environments. Most importantly, we derive the statistical distributions of the channel parameters of widely accepted mmWave channel models that fit these environments. This is a highly valuable contribution, since researchers in this field can use our empirical model to understand the performance of their mmWave systems in typical industrial settings. Beyond analyzing and discussing our insights, with this paper we also share our extensive dataset with the research community.