Wave Propagation in Hospitals with Composite Wall Structures

This paper deals with the simulation of wave propagation inside hospitals in the frequency range from 42.6 MHz to 5.2 GHz. Due to the special construction of the walls the wave propagation behaves differently compared to other buildings. Some of the walls, e.g. that of the operating and the X-ray rooms contain metal layers inside their structure. Moreover, most of the walls contain very inhomogeneous metallic structures inside, for example pipes and cables which have strong influence on the wave propagation. The simulation of such scenarios is a current subject of research. The main idea of the proposed approach is to model the walls as a composition of multiple layers with different materials. The associated material parameters are obtained from measurements. Based on this, ray-tracing simulations are performed for a complete floor of a hospital and compared to measurements. For frequencies below 300 MHz the FDTD method is used to simulate the coupling between rooms through slots.