MODELING TREE EFFECTS ON PATH LOSS IN A RESIDENTIAL ENVIRONMENT

A theoretical model is proposed to compute the path loss in a vegetate d residential environment, with particular application to mobile radio systems. As in the past, the row of houses or blocks of buildings are viewed as diffracting cylinders lying on the earth and the canopy of the trees are located adjacent to and above the houses/buildings. In t his approach, a row of houses or buildings is represented by an absorb ing screen and the adjacent canopy of trees by a partially absorbing p hase screen. The phase-screen properties are found by finding the mean field in the canopy of the tree. Physical optics (PO) is then used to evaluate the diffracting field at the receiver level by using a multi ple Kirchhoff-Huygens integration for each absorbing/phase half-screen combination.