Evaluation of Radio over Sea Propagation Based ITU-R Recommendation P.1546-5

—The propagation prediction research has mainly focused on studying the radio propagation models in urban or rural land areas. In this paper, we extend a method for 950 MHz propagation prediction over sea based ITU-R Recommendation P.1546-5. A gauge of the accuracy of the prediction Free Space model, correction Okumura-Hata model and the P.1546-5 model is presented. The P.1546-5 is evaluated using measurement results which were obtained by utilizing the pilot signal in a commercial GSM network over sea around Haikou, China. The comparison is enabled by using hit rate metrics. Measurement results show that P.1546-5 model underestimates the field strength about 6 dB on average for Haikou region in South China Sea. However, the P.1546-5 prediction model provides better accuracy prediction of the path loss compared to the Free Space model and the correction Okumura-Hata model. We provide proposals to enhance the sea propagation prediction accuracy of ITU-R Recommendation P.1546.