Performance Evaluation of 24GHz Spectrum Indoor Wireless Radio Links

Wireless communication systems are susceptible to propagation impairments such as scattering, interference, multipath fading, and delay spread. Furthermore, unlike wired networks in which signals propagate in a confined media characterised by high quality system performance and high data rates up to 10Gbps, wireless signals propagate through the air and are as a result prone to security attacks. As WLANs are becoming vital tools to meet the demand for wireless internet services, it becomes imperative to study novel approaches for achieving good access and high data rate transmission. The conventional WLAN network standards by IEEE802.11 family are characterised by maximum data rate of 54Mbps. This is below the required bandwidth for channel intensive applications such as multimedia services, uncompressed video streaming, fast file uploads and downloads. Also, the numerous subscribers competing for seamless wireless internet connection has overcrowded the network channels in microwave bands, resulting in poor performance and degradation of the entire WLAN networks. As much as 1Gbps and higher data rates communication are attractive for several application described above, this technological goal can only be realised by engaging millimetre wave (MMW) spectrum. The Spectrum bands at 24GHz, 28GHz, 38GHz and 60GHz are currently being focused on to support shorter-range, high-speed communication systems. These bands are capable of the Gb/s throughput as required by bandwidth intensive and multimedia consumer-oriented applications . The potentials of 24GHz spectrum for gigabits data rate delivery performance in real time applications was investigated in this work.