Wireless Propagation in Buildings: A Statistical Scattering Approach

A new approach to the modeling of wireless propagation in buildings is introduced. We treat the scattering by walls and local clutter probabilistically through either a relaxation-time approximation in a Boltzmann equation or by using a diffusion equation. The result is a range of a model in which one can vary the trade-off between the complexity of the building description and the accuracy of the prediction. The two limits of this range are ray-tracing at the most accurate end and a simple decay law at the most simple. By comparing results for two of these new models with measurements, we conclude that a reasonably accurate description of propagation can be obtained with a relatively simple model. The most effective way to use the models is by combining them with a few measurements through a sampling technique.