Modeling In-Vehicle Wideband Wireless Channels Using Reverberation Chamber Theory

In this paper, the wideband channel is studied inside a vehicle. Propagation inside a recent car (model bought in 2006) is investigated and the power delay profile is measured for three different scenarios. Two kinds of transmission bandwidths are studied, 200MHz around 5 Ghz and an ultra-wideband bandwidth of 3 Ghz around 4.5 GHz. The ultra-wideband measurements allow to clearly identifying the propagation mechanism in this kind of environment. For each scenario, an exponential model for the power delay profile is shown to be in good agreement. A theoretical model based on reverberation chamber theory is proposed. It allows to predict the rms delay spread inside the car. A Comparison with measurements inside a reverberation chamber is presented.