Deterministic method of information transmission channel prediction in multipath environments

The results of prediction using radio propagation models typically represent physical characteristics of a radio channel. The commonly exploited use of these characteristics as a metric in network planning, instead of rigorous system-level channel parameters, may lead to non-satisfactory results for modern communication and broadcast systems. In the current contribution, a general method for prediction of system-level channel characteristics (BER, data rate, etc.) is proposed, based on site-specific propagation models, deterministic system models and spatial statistical generalization. Validation of the method with direct measurements in a complex indoor environment (for BPSK, QAM, OFDM QAM) has shown its high accuracy (below 21 % RMS error of local mean channel capacity prediction). Another subject of the current work is the experimental investigation of the dependence of system-level characteristics prediction accuracy upon spatial detailing of prediction, which demonstrated the considerable enhancement of accuracy with a decrease in detailing. The proposed method may be directly applied to network planning: it provides means for metric calculation and coverage maps estimation.