Wave propagation modeling inside vehicles by using a ray tracing approach

With the growing demand for sensors and actors in the automotive technology, a wireless concept for the data exchange between different system components inside a vehicle becomes interesting. In order to describe and thus assess the mobile radio channel in the vehicle, simulations are required. For low frequencies, full wave simulations using the method of moments are well suited. For higher frequencies, these models become inadequate as regards the computational effort. This paper discusses the demand for models that can describe the radio channel inside vehicles at high frequencies and presents an appropriate ray tracing approach. The results of a measurement campaign are used to validate the proposed ray optical model.