Directional Spreads of Dense Multipath Components in Indoor Environments: Experimental Validation of a Ray-Tracing Approach

This paper investigates the prediction capabilities of a Ray-Tracing tool with advanced features, i.e., diffuse scattering and penetration, in terms of the angular spreads and spectra of the directional propagation channel. In particular, it highlights the angular behavior of dense multipaths, which may represent a non-negligible part of the received power, by comparing Ray-Tracing simulations with experimental data (office and laboratory environments). Results show that a Ray-Tracing approach including diffuse scattering is able to reproduce the dense multipath angular spreads, with errors around 4 to 20 degrees, and that scattering from ceiling is significant to predict the elevation spread. The assumption that diffuse scattering is clustered and strongly related to the most significant specular components is also successfully validated.