Polarization behavior of discrete multipath and diffuse scattering in urban environments at 4.5 GHz

The polarization behavior of the mobile MIMO radio channel is analyzed from polarimetric double-directional channel measurements, which were performed in a macrocell rural environment in Tokyo. The recorded data comprise non-line-of-sight, obstructed line-of-sight, and line-of-sight conditions. The gradient-based maximum-likelihood estimation framework RIMAX was used to estimate both specular and dense multipath components. Joint angular-delay results are gained only for the specular components. The dense multipath components, which may be attributed to diffuse scattering, can be characterized only in delay domain. Different characteristics describing the polarization behavior and power-weighted cross-and copolarization ratios for both types of components are introduced. Statistical analysis of long measurement track segments indicates global trends, whereas local analysis emphasizes specific behavior such as polarization dependency on angle of incidence in streets and under shadowing conditions. The results also underline the importance of modeling changing and transient propagation scenarios which are currently not common in available MIMO channel models. Copyright (c) 2007 Markus Landmann et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.