A new statistical model for site-specific indoor radio propagation prediction based on geometric optics and geometric probability

The ray-tracing (RT) algorithm has been used for accurately predicting the site-specific radio propagation characteristics, in spite of its computational intensity. Statistical models, on the other hand, offers computational simplicity but low accuracy. In this paper, a new model is proposed for predicting the indoor radio propagation to achieve computational simplicity over the RT method and better accuracy than the statistical models. The new model is based on the statistical derivation of the ray-tracing operation, whose results are a number of paths between the transmitter and receiver, each path comprises a number of rays. The pattern and length of the rays in these paths are related to statistical parameters of the site-specific features of indoor environment, such as the floor plan geometry. A key equation is derived to relate the average path power to the site-specific parameters, which are: 1) mean free distance; 2) transmission coefficient; and 3) reflection coefficient. The equation of the average path power is then used to predict the received power in a typical indoor environment. To evaluate the accuracy of the new model in predicting the received power in a typical indoor environment, a comparison with RT results and with measurement data shows an error bound of less than 5 dB.

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