This project characterizes propagation losses, spatial and temporal signal variations, delay spread, cross polarization discrimination, rain effects, effects of channels on modulated signals, and indoor-outdoor propagation. It is essential for determining coverage and for system architecture and transceiver design. This project investigates low loss beamforming networks, new efficient array architectures, and adaptive digital beamforming to improve capacity and coverage, with acceptable costs, for broadband wireless systems. The project is expected to develop an antenna and MMIC RF subsystem that will be interfaced to an eventual IF transceiver, and will also be used as a RF front end for future 28 Ghz propagation and transmission experiments. The main focus was on radio systems with carrier frequencies within the 20 to 60 GHz range, because of the relative abundance of available bandwidth in this range.
Infrared systems offer cost advantages for localized indoor wireless access.