Statistical Modeling of Ultrawideband MIMO Propagation Channel in a Warehouse Environment

This paper describes an extensive propagation channel measurement campaign in a warehouse environment for line-of-sight (LOS) and nonline-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios. The measurement setup employs a vector network analyzer operating in the 2-8-GHz frequency band combined with an 8 x 8 virtual multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna array. We develop a comprehensive statistical propagation channel model based on high-resolution extraction of multipath components and subsequent spatiotemporal clustering analysis. The intracluster direction of departure (DoD), direction of arrival (DoA), and the time of arrival (ToA) are independent, both for the LOS and NLOS scenarios. The intracluster DoD and DoA can be approximated by the Laplace distribution, and the intracluster ToA can be approximated by an exponential mixture distribution. The intercluster analysis, however, shows a dependency between the cluster DoD, DoA, and ToA. To capture this dependency, we separately model the clusters caused by single and multiple bounce scattering along the aisles in the warehouse. The intercluster DoD distribution follows a Laplace distribution, while the cluster DoA conditioned on the DoD is approximated by a Gaussian mixture distribution. The model was validated using the capacity and delay-spread values.