Radio Propagation and Adaptive Antennas for Wireless Communication Networks, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER FIVETerrestrial Radio Communications

In this chapter, we consider wave propagation in various terrain environments based on the description of propagation characteristics such as the propagation (or path) loss, L, and the slope parameter γ that describes signal decay. These main parameters are very crucial in predicting land communication channels. First, in Sections 5.1 and 5.2, we introduce the reader to a brief description of the terrain features and various propagation situations in terrestrial communications related to the terminal antenna positions with respect to building rooftops. In Section 5.3, we continue the description of the propagation channel when two antennas are placed on a flat terrain and under line-of-sight (LOS) conditions, when a free-space propagation concept can be used and is described by a two-ray model. In Section 5.4, we consider radio propagation in a “hilly terrain,” where we replace the hill by a “knife edge” and introduce Lee's empirical model. Next, in Section 5.5, we present a unified approach on how to predict radio losses in rural forest area links based on a stochastic model that describes multiscattering effects from trees. This model is compared with standard empirical, analytical, and statistical models. Section 5.6 describes radio propagation in mixed residential areas based on the same stochastic approach, but taking into consideration only a single scattering from houses and trees. Section 5.7 introduces the reader to the problems ...