1998 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
Volume 46 Number 6, June 1998

A Ray-Tracing Method for Modeling Indoor Wave Propagation and Penetration

Page 907.

Abstract:

In this paper, a ray-tracing method for waves propagating inside building structures is presented. Ray tubes are used to model the wave propagation and penetration and all the significantly reflected and transmitted ray tubes from interfaces are included. Also, the cross sections of the ray tubes at the field points are evaluated to find the spreading factors of the waves and then the geometrical optics (GO) contributions at the locations of the receiving antenna. A program has been developed according to this ray-tracing technique that can be applied to simulate waves transmitted through and reflected from electrically large complex two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) bodies. To verify this ray-tracing program, 2-D moment method (MM) solutions for wave propagating in a two-room structure and also through a stair-shaped wall above a lossy ground are used to compare with those obtained from the ray tracing. Besides, comparisons of field measurements and ray-tracing simulations at 900 and 1800 MHz performed in a corridor on different floors and inside a staircase are shown. The effective complex dielectric constants of the building structures determined from a free-space method are employed in the simulations and a vector network analyzer is used for the field measurements. Good agreements are obtained. In addition, measured results for waves penetrating an exterior wall with metal-framed windows at 1290 MHz are employed to test the ray-tracing solutions, which indicate that scattering from the metal frames may be significant for field points near the windows. This ray-tracing program can be applied to evaluate the channel characteristics for the indoor wireless communications.

References

1. W. Honcharenko, H. L. Dailing, and J. Dailing, "Mechanisms governing propagation between different floors in buildings," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 41, pp. 787-790, June 1993.
2. H. L. Bertoni, W. Honcharenko, L. R. Maciel, and H. H. Xia, "UHF propagation prediction for wireless personal communications," Proc. IEEE, vol. 82, pp. 1333-1359, Sept. 1994.
3. S. Y. Seidel and T. S. Rappaport, "Site-specific propagation prediction for wireless in-building personal communication system design," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 43, pp. 879-891, Nov. 1994.
4. U. Dersch and E. Zollinger, "Propagation mechanisms in microcell and indoor environments," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 43, pp. 1058-1066, Nov. 1994.
5. S.-H. Chen and S.-K. Jeng, "An SBR/image approach for indoor radio propagation in a corridor," IEICE Trans. Electron., vol. E78C, no. 8, pp. 1058-1062, Aug. 1995.
6. P. T. Davis and C. R. Mcguffin, Wireless Local Area Networks: Technology, Issues, and Strategies.New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995.
7. K. Pahlavan and A. H. Levesque, Wireless Information Networks.New York: Wiley, 1995.
8. C.-F. Yang and T.-S. Wang, "A moment method solution for TMz and TEz waves illuminating two-dimensional objects above a lossy half space," IEEE Trans. Electromagn. Compat., vol. 38, pp. 433-440, Aug. 1996.
9. C.-F. Yang, C.-J. Ko, and B.-C. Wu, "A free space approach for extracting the equivalent dielectric constants of the walls in buildings," in IEEE AP-S Int. Symp. URSI Radio Sci. Meet., Baltimore, MD, July 1996, pp. 1036-1039.
10. J. Horikoshi, K. Tanaka, and T. Morinaga, "1.2 GHz band wave propagation measurements in concrete building for indoor radio communications," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. VT-35, pp. 146-151, Nov. 1986.
11. H. Kim and H. Ling, "Electromagnetic scattering from an inhomogeneous object by ray tracing," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 40, pp. 517-525, May 1992.
12. C. A. Balanis, Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics.New York: Wiley, 1989.
13. W. L. Stutzman and G. A. Thiele, Antenna Theory and Design.New York: Wiley, 1981.