Enhancing Outdoor-to-Indoor mmWave Coverage Using Static Transmissive Surfaces: Experimental Results

Inhalt:
Static transmissive surfaces (STSs) offer a complementary passive approach for enabling mmWave signal penetration through energy-efficient building materials without requiring power sources or electronic control circuitry. This paper presents design and development of STSs specifically for next-generation millimeter-wave (mmWave) wireless networks, featuring specialized patterning that enhances signal penetration through lowemissivity glass while maintaining thermal insulation properties. Performance evaluation is conducted in a two-sided (outdoor-toindoor) environment using commercial 5G network equipment. The received signal strength indicator (RSSI), reference signal received power (RSRP), and signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) measurements on a customer premises equipment (CPE) terminal show that the designed STSs provide 13-21 dB enhancement over standard low-emissivity glass, effectively improving indoor coverage for 5G mmWave networks. These results validate STSs as environmentally sustainable solutions for mitigating signal attenuation in modern energy-efficient structures without compromising their thermal performance.