Thesis

Measuring and characterizing the wireless propagation channel is of utmost importance for developing applications at most recent and unexplored frequency bands. However, since there are no off-the-shelf hardware solutions and no proven algorithms for new frequency bands, doing channel measurements itself is experimental, and the concepts of different research institutions and labs will widely differ. To still develop one common understanding of the wireless propagation channel, concepts for verifying and quantifying the accuracy of the channel sounding results are required¹.

At EMS we wish to first measure, then estimate, and finally model radio channels as accurately as possible. For this we develop dedicated, high precision measurement devices, so called channel sounders, that are able to capture spectral, spatial and temporal information about radio wave propagation. However, the effort in terms of hardware and the subsequent data processing is rising disproportionally with measurement bandwidth, scenario complexity and required accuracy.

To avoid this, we wish to pair the conducted radio measurements with a suitable parametric model that allow to accurately simulate the dominating propagation phenomena. This would allow us to generate radio channel realizations cheaply, quickly, especially in complex scenarios without costly measurements. In our case, so-called differentiable ray tracing tools can turn a digital description of an environment or an object into a simulation. This can be done at rapid speed due to GPU-based hardware acceleration.