Accelerated Ray Optical Propagation Modeling for the Planning of Wireless Communication Networks

Ray optical modeling of wave propagation is often used for the prediction of the field strength (and delay spread) in wireless mobile communication networks. However, the practical use of these deterministic models is limited due to their high computational demands. For large areas in urban or indoor scenarios the computation times are in the range of hours which is too long for the planning of mobile radio networks. A new method for the acceleration of ray optical models is presented in this paper. It is based on a single intelligent preprocessing of the database in which the mutual visibility relations between the walls and the edges of the buildings are determined. The propagation model is implemented for urban and indoor scenarios and comparisons with measurements show the gain in computation efficiency as well as in achieved prediction accuracy.