Modelling Radiowave Propagation through Vegetation media: a comparison between RET and dRET models

This paper compares the performance of the radiative energy transfer (RET) model and an enhanced discrete version of the RET, the so called dRET, when predicting the scattered signals emanating from inhomogeneous vegetation volumes. The analysis of each model performance was carried out by comparing the model predictions with the actual scattered signal measured in a selected inhomogeneous tree formation at 11.2 and 62.4 GHz. It is shown that both models perform satisfactorily provided that the vegetation surrounding the receiver remains relatively homogenous. Nevertheless, when the vegetation geometry is more irregular, and therefore consists of differing types of vegetation, only the dRET model was observed to provide reasonable signal level estimates over the entire angular range.