Characterization of delay spread for mobile radio communications under collapsed buildings

Numerous investigations of mobile radio communication have been conducted in environments such as urban, outdoor-to-indoor or indoor, only a few are in ruins. Within a running project, I-LOV, a study of a mobile radio propagation channel in urban search and rescue scenarios is conducted. Due to complex environment in ruins, great multipath interference can take place, which strongly impacts communication quality and localization accuracy. This paper focuses on the characterization of time dispersion in such scenarios at GSM 900, GSM 1800 and UMTS frequency bands. High resolution measurements have been performed under collapsed buildings and post-processing data analysis were executed. The mean delay and RMS delay spread has been investigated according to power delay profiles. The effect of frequency window function on impulse responses and delay spread is also researched.