Theoretical investigation of foliage effects on path loss for residential environments

A mobile communications system depends on the propagation loss due to the environment between the transmitter and the mobile receiver located at the street level. A theoretical model is proposed to include the effects of trees as well as buildings/houses on the propagation in residential environments. As in past models, the rows of building/houses are modeled as diffracting cylinders lying on the Earth, but now the canopies of the trees adjacent to and above the building/houses are included in the model. The building/houses are represented as absorbing screens and the trees as phase screens. The phase screen properties are found by representing the trees as a time-invariant ensemble of leaves (discs) and branches (cylinders) all having a prescribed location and orientation statistics. The mean field at the aperture of the absorbing screen depends on the mean field in the canopy, which is calculated using the discrete scattering theory of Foldy (1945) and Lax (1951)