Evaluation and Analysis of Bit Error Rate due to propagation mechanisms of millimetre waves in a QAM system

The waves falling in the 40GHz to the 100GHz band in the electromagnetic spectrum are referred to as millimetre waves. Due to the large bandwidth availability, these high data-rate signals find a wide range of applications in modern communication technology such as broadband multimedia wireless systems and 4G cellular communications. Achieving a reduced Bit Error Rate (BER) of around 10 for high quality audio and video streaming, is a challenging task in this band of frequencies. In this paper, we have reviewed and studied the mathematical models for various propagation mechanisms that lead to an increase in the Bit Error Rate. We have then presented a formulation for the calculation of Bit Error Rate of a system employing Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. Key-words Bit Error Rate, Millimetre waves, Frequency, Attenuation, path loss, loss due to atmosphere, water vapour dispersion, scattering due to buildings, vegetative loss, QAM