GIS-based digital simulation of mobile communication

Mobile communication networks in rural areas were not given enough importance and emphasis unlike their urban counter parts due to the unattractive revenues and economic considerations for the cellular operators. But with the development of the national economy, it is necessary to construct communication networks in rural areas to realize covering the whole country. For better planning the base station construction, this paper proposes a method which is used to calculate propagation losses while transmitting in rural areas. The method extracts path profile from Digital Elevation Model, and then divides the ground points which in the path profile into shadow zone and non-shadow zone on the basis of peak points. The propagation losses of these two cases are calculated respectively. Afterward, propagation losses in all directions are calculated and the distribution map of propagation loss is generated. Take Longyan area as an example, the pilot simulation result shows that the propagation loss is influenced by topographic terrain, and its changing tendency is well coincide with theoretical analysis. The study indicates that this method is able to calculate propagation losses in complex terrain areas to a certain extent, and provide decision support for station site selection and network optimization while constructing base stations.