Propagation measurements and modeling for terrestrial line-of-sight links at 19.5 GHz

With the rapid growth of the telecommunications market, the hunger for greater bandwidth and higher data rates has become unrelenting. Together with the congestion of the frequency bands below 12 GHz, frequency planning has become increasingly difficult. The use of the upper portion of the k-band for terrestrial communication systems is inevitable due to the better spectrum availability of this frequency region and the inherent ability to provide higher data rates. The frequency band from 18 GHz to 20 GHz has been identified as a suitable candidate for short-haul line-of sight (LOS) links. As a consequence, a 6.73 km terrestrial LOS link centered at 19.5 GHz has been recently established between the Howard College and Westville campuses of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). In this paper, the research into the modeling and measurement of the proposed LOS link is discussed