The effect of vegetation near communication towers

An assessment of the environmental impact on a communication link is imperative to radio system planning. In this paper simulations have been carried out to investigate the effect of leafy vegetation in the vicinity of communication towers. The leafy vegetation layer is considered to have a flat top surface. The transmitting and the receiving antennas mounted on the towers are at the same height. This height is such that the transmitted signal grazes over the top surface of the vegetation layer at low grazing angles. The leafy vegetation layer is modeled by an ensemble of randomly oriented dielectric discs. Each dielectric disc is characterized by its impedance matrix. Using this impedance matrix as the basis, the scattering from the medium is by vectorially adding up the fields from all discs. Since the vegetation medium is electrically sparse, multiple scattering effects between discs is neglected.