New Approach to Wave Oriented Radio Propagation Modeling

Wireless communication systems are normally designed and optimized for line-of-sight propagation. In reality, however, the propagation scenario may be very complex involving a multitude of terrain features and obstacles, which generate multipathreflection, diffraction and scattering. An accurate evaluation of the communication channel performance would not be possible without a detailed knowledge of the physical features of the propagation medium. This Small Business Innovation Research projectproposes a physics-based approach to channel propagation modeling. The input to the model is a database that includes topographical information, terrain features, natural and man-made scatterers, etc. A user friendly software environment will be developedto interface the physical database with an advanced ray tracing code enhanced with a comprehensive library of full-wave scattering and diffraction models. Special emphasis will be placed on polarization characteristics, fading statistics and spectral andtemporal decorrelation of the channel. The proposed software package will be used for evaluation of channel performance and reliability in military mobile distributed networks as well as palnning of commercial communciation system.