Characterizing Blockage Statistics of Reflected Propagation Paths in sub-THz Indoor Communications

The future 6G cellular systems are expected to utilize the lower part of the terahertz frequency band, 100 - 300 GHz. As a result of high path losses, the coverage of such systems will be limited to a few tens of meters making them suitable for indoor environments. As compared to outdoor deployments, indoor usage of THz systems is characterized by the need to operate over shorter distances using the reflected propagation paths. This paper aims to characterize the impact of blockage of reflected propagation paths in typical scenarios. Specifically, we carry out a detailed measurements campaign at 156 GHz and report reflection losses, blockage losses over the reflected path as well as blockage duration, signal fall and rise times. Our results show that signal polarization has a profound impact on the reflection losses with E-plane horizontally oriented signal losses being at least 8 dB higher as compared to H-plane signal horizontal orientation. Furthermore, the reflection material types do not affect the mean blockage attenuation over the reflected paths. Generally, the presence of a reflector neither quantitatively nor qualitative changes the mean attenuation induced by a blockage phenomenon.