Prediction of indoor wireless coverage by leaky coaxial cable using ray tracing

A coaxial cable having a slotted or perforated outer conductor can be used as a base-station antenna for indoor wireless systems. This paper explores the use of ray-tracing software to predict the radio coverage that can be achieved by a leaky coax in a building with a given wall geometry. For either coupled-mode or radiating-mode cable, a heuristic model that represents the cable as a sequence of finite segments, each of which radiates diffusely with a radiation pattern given by Lambert's cosine law, is found to work well. However, the coupling-loss parameter, which defines the effective power radiated by each element, appears to depend significantly on whether the cable is laid in a rich scattering environment or a barren one.