Radio frequency measurements and capacity analysis for industrial indoor environments

In this study, path-loss and shadowing measurement results for three different industrial indoor environments at 900, 1600, and 2450 MHz are presented. The results show that the one-slope model fits the measured path-loss well, and the shadow fading samples follow a zero-mean Normal distribution. Low path-loss exponent values were found from our measurements, which may suggest the presence of heavy multi-path propagation in the measured channels. A comprehensive review of reported path-loss and shadowing measurements from various industrial environments is presented and compared with our measurement results. In addition, a channel capacity model with dependence on the measured parameters is investigated, which gives an insight to the effect of the propagation channel on system performance. This may assist the service providers to evaluate the technical feasibility of industrial wireless communications.