The Effect of Dust and Sand on the 5G Terrestrial Links

Abstract: Wireless connections are a communication channel used to support different applications in our life such as microwave connections, mobile cellular networks, and intelligent transportation systems. The wireless communication channels are affected by different weather factors such as rain, snow, fog, dust, and sand. This effect is more evident in the high frequencies of the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) band. Recently, the 5G opened the door to support different applications with high speed and good quality. A recent study investigates the effect of rain and snow on the 5G communication channel to reduce the challenge of using high millimeter-wave frequencies. This research investigates the impact of dust and sand on the communication channel of 5G mini links using Mie scattering model to estimate the propagating wave's attenuation by computing the free space loss of a dusty region. Also, the cross-polarization of the propagating wave with dust and sand is taken into account at different distances of the propagating length. Two kinds of mini links, ML-6363, and ML-6352, are considered to demonstrate the effect of dust and sand in these specific operating frequency bands. The 73.5 GHz (V-band) and (21.5GHz (K-band) are the ML-6352 and ML-6363 radio frequency, respectively. Also, signal depolarization is another important radio frequency transmission parameter that is considered heroin. The numerical and simulation results show that the 5G ML-6352 is more effect by dust and sand than ML6363. The 5G toolbox is used to build the communication system and simulate the effect of the dust and sand on the different frequency bands.