Wide band propagation measurements and ray tracing simulations at 1890 MHz

A wideband channel sounder was used to measure the complex impulse response of the radio channel. The sounder has a resolution of 10 ns, equivalent to a path length difference of 3 metres. Indoor measurements were made in the Engineering School building, which has a mixture of small offices, and large open plan lab spaces, together with long corridors. Outdoor measurements were done within the campus, a compact collection of buildings of irregular shape. Ray tracing simulations for the same environments used the Microcell Communication Simulator (MCS), marketed by EDX Engineering, Inc., Oregon, USA. This paper compares simulated delay spreads with the measured values, in a variety of locations. An indoor measurement was done for a single receiver location within a large lecture room, with the transmitter in a nearby corridor. A series of indoor measurements was also done with the transmitter in a single location in a side corridor and the receiver moving along a route following a main corridor. Outdoor measurements were done on the university campus in a large courtyard-like area, completely surrounded by irregular shaped buildings, and complicated by the three dimensional factors of sloping ground levels, and various elevated pedestrian bridges, which could not be included in the two dimensional ray tracing database. Measured rms delay spreads were generally larger than the ray tracing predicted values, except for outdoor situations of simple building geometry, where agreement with averaged measured values over most of the route was good