Efficient point-to-area electromagnetic field calculation using tube tracing method

A new method is proposed to calculate the field or power distribution on a grid plane of receivers called receiving plane, with arbitrary height in an urban scenario using tube tracing algorithm. Receiving plane is divided into small cells according to the resolution requirement. As opposed to checking all cells for possible reception of the ray tubes, it is first checked the intersection of the ray tube with that plane. It is illustrated that the existing three-dimensional shooting-and-bouncing ray methods, dealing with point-to-area problem, have some errors to find the true illuminated cells except in limited cases. Here, several new techniques are employed to determine all cells illuminated by the ray tube at different cases, exactly. Then, the field related to each illuminated cell is determined by an accurate backtracking method. The memory consideration of the method is also addressed. Moreover, a solution is presented to avoid the multiple counting of tubes fitting into the tube tracing procedure. Finally, comparison with measurements in an urban scenario illustrates the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method.