Theoretical estimates of HVAC duct channel capacity for high-speed Internet access

We report theoretical channel capacity estimates of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) ducts based on multi-carrier transmission that uses M-QAM modulation and measured channel responses at 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band. It is shown that, data rates in excess of 1 Gbps are possible over distances up to 500 m in "matched" ducts (one can think of "matched" ducts as user-friendly ducts, since "matching" can, in principle, eliminate all the multipath reflections in HVAC ducts). Our work also shows that data rates in excess of 300 Mbps are possible over distances up to 500 m even in the presence of significant multipath reflections.