Electromagnetic field strength prediction in an urban environment: A useful tool for the planning of LMSS

A model for the prediction of the electromagnetic field strength in an urban environment is presented. The ray model, that is based on the Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD), includes effects of the non-perfect conductivity of the obstacles and their surface roughness. The urban environment is transformed into a list of standardized obstacles that have various shapes and material properties. The model is capable of accurately predicting the field strength in the urban environment by calculating different types of wave contributions such as reflected, edge and corner diffracted waves, and combinations thereof. Also, antenna weight functions are introduced to simulate the spatial filtering by the mobile antenna. Communication channel parameters such as signal fading, time delay profiles, Doppler shifts and delay-Doppler spectra can be derived from the ray-tracing procedure using post-processing routines. The model has been tested against results from scaled measurements at 50 GHz and proves to be accurate.