Simulated propagation through leafy vegetation

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 present in the line of sight path of a communication link. The transmitting and the receiving antennas mounted on the towers are at the same height. 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 estimated by the vector addition of the electric field from all discs. The vegetation medium in question is electrically sparse, and hence multiple scattering effects between discs are neglected.