A semi-reverberation chamber configuration to emulate second-order descriptors of real-life indoor wireless propagation channels

In this article, a new reverberation chamber (RC) loading configuration is proposed that consists of using the conventional central barrier, i.e., absorbing material arranged on the floor of the RC, together with anechoic corners. The latter are built covering the two edges of the chamber and the nearby floor with absorbing material. This configuration, termed Semi-RC, is tested against both emulated and actual indoor wireless propagation channels. The former ones are obtained using the RC of the Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Parthenope.' The key metrics adopted to discuss the performance of the proposed approach are based on second-order channel descriptors, i.e., the power delay profile (PDP) and the autocorrelation function. Experimental results confirm the soundness of the proposed approach that outperforms the state-of-the-art central barrier loading configuration when dealing with channels calling for very steep-descendant PDPs. The two configurations result in comparable performance when slowly descendant PDPs are considered.