Evaluation of the Spatial Consistency Feature in the 3GPP Geometry-Based Stochastic Channel Model

Spatial consistency, meaning the spatial correlation of small scale fading, is a recently added feature in the geometry-based stochastic channel model used by 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardization. This feature is relevant for schemes that utilize channel correlation among users, e.g. clustering according to second order channel statistics. This paper provides a simulation based evaluation of the spatial consistency feature implemented in the open source quasi-deterministic radio channel generator (QuaDRiGa) channel model in terms of angle difference of multi-path components over distance as well as similarity of transmit covariance matrices. This evaluation helps future work that uses the spatial consistency feature in setting their parameters.