Modeling and analysis of dominant propagation effects in real indoor environment at 5.2 GHz

With a view to planning for wireless local area networks (WLAN) in the 5.2 GHz frequency band, a ray-tracing-based wideband indoor wave propagation model is applied to a real indoor environment and the major wave propagation effects found in the corresponding measurements are analyzed with its help. In evaluating the space-variant impulse responses of the measurement and simulation, the main propagation paths are properly reconstructed by the model for a classroom environment. Still, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the material parameters of the obstacles involved. However, it is shown that using a ray-tracing algorithm, the essential channel properties can be extracted from measurements by comparing the scattering functions of the channel for both measurement and simulation. Significant scatterers are identified and qualitative information is extracted, showing which material parameters have been chosen “well” or “badly” by comparing single contributions from the simulation results to the corresponding measurements. An optimization and automation should be possible and is topic of current research