Influence of the receiver near range in urban and forested areas in land mobile radio systems

Network planning in mobile communications requires a realistic description of the propagation phenomena. Common wave propagation models for rural areas consider mainly the influence of topography. However, shadowing effects of the morphography in the vicinity of the mobile cause additional path loss. Usually this path loss is accounted for either by empirical corrections or by additional knife edges. In this paper new ray optical approaches for the calculation of the additional path loss for mobile locations within forested or urban environments are presented. For these situations typical macro situations are defined. In the case of urban environments the additional path loss is determined by means of the Uniform Theory of Diffraction whereas in forested areas a lateral wave propagation approach is used. The model is applied to an existing GSM-network. The results achieved by this model show good agreement with both wideband and narrowband measurements