5G Channel Models for Railway Use Cases at mmWave Band and the Path Towards Terahertz
Ke Guan, Juan Moreno, Bo Ai, César Briso-Rodríguez, Bile Peng, Danping He, Andrej Hrovat, Zhangdui Zhong, Thomas Kürner
Abstract
High-speed trains are one of the most relevant scenarios for the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communications and the "smart rail mobility" vision, where a high-data-rate wireless connectivity with up to several GHz bandwidths will be required. This is a strong motivation for the exploration of millimeter wave (mmWave) band. In this article, we identify the main challenges and make progress towards real-istic 5G mmWave channel models for railway use cases. In order to cope with the challenge of including the railway features in the channel models, we define reference scenarios to help the parameterization of channel models for railway use at mmWave band. Simulations and the subsequent measurements used to validate the model ref lect the detailed inf luence of railway objects and the accuracy of the simulations. Finally, we point out the future directions towards the full version of the smart rail mobility which will be powered by terahertz (THz) communications.