1999 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 47 Number 8, August 1999

A Deterministic Ray Tube Method for Microcellular Wave Propagation Prediction Model

Page 1344.

Abstract:

In this paper, we present a new and very fast ray-tracing method using a ray tube tree, which is based on uniform geometrical theory of diffraction (UTD) and can solve some of the problems that other ray-tracing methods have. It is developed for quasi three-dimensional (3-D) environments and can be applied to any complex propagation environment composed of arbitrary-shaped buildings and streets. It finds all propagation paths from a transmitter to a receiver extensively with very high computation efficiency. It is fundamentally a point-to-point tracing method, so reception tests are not required and it guarantees high accuracy. To validate our ray-tracing method, signal path loss and root mean square (rms) delay spread were computed in the downtown core of Ottawa, Canada, and they were also compared with the published measurements. The results of the proposed method in this paper show good agreement with the measurements. The computation time required to obtain a path loss map in the site reveals very short in comparison with other methods.

References

1. V. Erceg, S. Ghassemzadeh, M. Taylor, D. Li, and D. L. Schilling, "Urban/suburban out-of-sight propagation modeling," IEEE Communicat. Mag., vol. 30, pp. 56-61, June 1992.
2. V. Erceg, A. J. Rustako, and R. S. Roman, "Diffraction around corners and its effects on the microcell coverage area in urban and suburban environments at 900 MHz, 2 GHz, and 6 GHz," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 43, pp. 762-766, Aug. 1994.
3. A. J. Rustako Jr., N. Amitay, G. J. Owens, and R. S. Roman, "Radio propagation at microwave frequencies for line-of-sight microcellular mobile and personal communications," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 40, pp. 203-210, Feb. 1991.
4. K. R. Schaubach, N. J. Davis, and T. S. Rappaport, "A ray tracing method for predicting path loss and delay spread in microcellular environments," in 42nd IEEE Veh. Technol. Conf., Denver, CO, May 1992, vol. 2, pp. 932-935.
5. K. R. Schaubach and N. J. Davis, "Microcellular radio-channel propagation prediction," IEEE Antennas Propagat. Mag., vol. 36, pp. 25-33, Aug. 1994.
6. M. C. Lawton and J. P. McGeehan, "The application of GTD and ray launching techniques to channel modeling for cordless radio systems," in 42nd IEEE Veh. Technol. Conf., Denver, CO, May 1992, vol. 2, pp. 125-130.
7. --, "The application of a deterministic ray launching algorithm for the prediction of radio channel characteristics in small-cell environments," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 43, pp. 955-969, Nov. 1994.
8. C. Bergljung and L. G. Olsson, "Rigorous diffraction theory applied to street microcell propagation," in IEEE Global Telecommunicat. Conf., GLOBECOM'91, Phoenix, AZ, Dec. 1991, pp. 1292-1296.
9. S. Y. Seidel and T. S. Pappaport, "Site-specific propagation prediction for wireless in-building personal communication system design," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 43, pp. 879-891, Nov. 1994.
10. S. Y. Tan and H. S. Tan, "UTD propagation model in an urban street scene for microcellular communications," IEEE Trans. Electromagn. Compat., vol. 35, pp. 423-428, Nov. 1993.
11. --, "A theory for propagation path loss characteristics in a city street-grid," IEEE Trans. Electromagn. Compat., vol. 37, pp. 333-342, Aug. 1993.
12. --, "Improved three-dimensional ray tracing technique for microcellular propagation models," Electron. Lett., vol. 31, pp. 1503-1505, Aug. 1995.
13. --, "A microcellular communications propagation model based on the uniform theory of diffraction and multiple image theory," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 44, pp. 1317-1326, Oct. 1996.
14. M. G. Sanchez, L. de Haro, A. G. Pino, and M. Calvo, "Exhaustive ray tracing algorithm for microcellular propagation prediction models," Electron. Lett., vol. 32, pp. 624-625, Mar. 1996.
15. J. H. Whitteker, "Measurements of path loss at 910 MHz for proposed microcell urban mobile systems," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 37, pp. 125-129, Aug. 1988.
16. D. C. Cox, "Delay Doppler characteristics of multipath propagation at 910 MHz in a suburban mobile radio environment," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-20, pp. 625-635, Sept. 1972.
17. M. J. Feuerstein, K. L. Blackard, T. S. Rappaport, S. Y. Seidel, and H. H. Xia, "Path loss, delay spread, and outage models as functions of antenna height for microcellular system design," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 43, pp. 487-498, Aug. 1994.
18. R. J. Luebbers, "Finite conductivity uniform GTD versus knife edge diffraction in prediction of propagation path loss," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-32, pp. 70-76, Jan. 1984.
19. P. D. Holm, "UTD-diffraction coefficients for higher order wedge diffracted fields," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 44, pp. 879-888, June 1996.
20. D. A. McNamara, C. W. I. Pistorius, and J. A. G. Malherbe, Introduction to the Uniform Geometrical Theory of Diffraction.Boston, MA: Artech House, 1990.