Ray tracing prediction of indoor radio propagation

Indoor wireless systems will be used in a large variety of office, factory and residential environments. Thus, adequate guidelines for radio port placement are needed to ensure satisfactory performance at the lowest cost. These guidelines must be derived from a large body of site-specific propagation data. However, collecting a statistically significant database through measurements is a daunting task. Alternatively, this database can be generated by using propagation models, validated by measurements. Several models exist for the statistical characterization of microwave propagation within buildings, However, statistical models do not provide site-specific information. We propose a hybrid model in which ray tracing is used to predict, at any given location, the local mean of the received power and the delay profile. Variations about the mean values can then be captured via a statistical description matched to the local environment. We describe an efficient 3-D ray tracing algorithm which accounts for all (transmitted as well as reflected) rays reaching the receiver location after an arbitrary number of reflections. We include the effects of the angle of incidence, the material dielectric constant and the antenna patterns. The predicted values for the local means of the received power are then compared against measurements to establish the accuracy of this approach.