  As FM coverage is so ubiquitous around the world, several applications can be
considered to better exploit this useful band. Thus, it is of significant
interest to investigate and characterize channel properties of the FM Band for
the potential two-way digital wireless systems. In this paper, we present the
results of field measurements at 86 MHz conducted at Gebze, Kocaeli, Turkey.
Through the measurements, some of the FM channel characteristics are
identified. Measurements are performed for urban, hilly terrain, and rural
areas. Our results show that the FM channel expectedly has a large coverage
area but at the same time, it possesses large channel excess delays. While most
of COST-207 channel power delay profile models are also applicable for the FM
Band, for urban environments and hilly terrain environments, channel clusters
and excess delays are higher than those of COST-207 models. As 5G systems aim
to utilize lower frequency bands for supplementary links, FM Band can be
considered as one of the potential bands and the channel models proposed in
this study can then be exploited for performance analysis.
