Numerical assessment of a class of RF propagation path loss models for wireless communications

Channel capacity in wireless communications is affected by the signal loss between a pair a transmitter and receiver and is studied here for the simple case of a two-ray model over a lossy half space. This is a classic Sommerfeld problem and has recently been extensively studied by Sarkar et. al. Approximate models often provide rapid solutions but their limitations are as such unknown. In this investigation the nature of decay of the field strength and propagation path loss is explored through rigorous and approximate solvers for r.f. propagation modeling. The present results show that the rigorous solutions predicts much lower field strengths than the approximate models which could significantly affect the channel quality.