Fast Prediction of RF Propagation Loss in Industrial Environments

Abstract

There is a tradeoff between accuracy and computation complexity when it comes to estimation of RF path loss in a real-world environment. Accuracy deterioration and complexity increase could be significant even for a moderately complex scene. Conventional approach either resorts to simple models or full-fledged calculation. We propose a practical method to provide fast and site-specific estimation of propagation loss using industrial environment as our target. There are two main contributions in this proposal. First, the conventional Fresnel diffraction method is extended to handle multiple obstacles in the path. Second, to get better estimation, the method infuses geometrical information of the site by taking advantage of recent advances and affordability of commercial 3D modeling software. A software toolkit has been developed and demonstrated on simulated industrial scenes.