Surface Wave Wireless Channel on Right-Angle Bent Metal Pipes in Industrial Environment: Modeling and Analysis

Abstract

This letter investigates surface waves (SW) launchers wirelessly coupled to a 90°-cornered metal pipe to develop a wireless SW channel model in Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) environment. A pair of orthogonal SW modes is excited on a right-angle bent metal pipe, in which demonstrating a path loss can be reduced of 3–10 dB compared to free-space propagation. Furthermore, the multi-path characteristic of the right-angle SW channel can be mitigated by suppressing the first multi-path level of about 7.5dB compared to the free-space propagation scenario. Simulations of channel capacity (CC) are performed to demonstrate a CC enhancement of 3.5Gbps, when BW is 2GHz and SNR is 3.7 dB. The advanced wireless channel models for right-angle metal pipe are expected to provide beneficial strategy for optimizing SW-node deployments in complex IIoT scenarios.