Radio Propagation Modeling and Simulation Using Ray Tracing

Techniques of radio propagation modeling and simulation are briefly reviewed, and the advantages of ray tracing methods are discussed. Spatial division methods are employed to accelerate the ray tracing algorithms and achieve computational efficiency and accuracy for propagation modeling. Algorithms extracting 3D models from geospatial resources are developed to establish realistic models for propagation environments. Terrain features such as ridges in mountainous regions are important elements characterizing the propagation of electromagnetic waves. Simple methods are introduced to extract these features. Different levels of detail of propagation environment are examined to gain insight of their effect on the efficiency and accuracy of propagation simulation. Computer hardware acceleration using graphics processing units (GPUs) is applied to the propagation simulation over terrains and a significant speedup is achieved. For source localization applications using ray tracing simulations, two methods (time reversal and machine learning) are discussed and their performances are investigated. A perspective of propagation modeling in the near future is given, and it points out that ray tracing methods will play a more significant role in providing accurate simulation results in real time for dynamic environments.