Efficient ray-tracing acceleration techniques for radio propagation modeling

Ray-tracing and uniform theory of diffraction techniques are already widely applied to site-specific radio propagation modeling for wireless applicati ons. Software tools using such techniques may take considerable computation time in the analysis of the propagation conditions in a given environment even for a short mobile terminal route. Efficient acceleration techniques a re required to make such analysis tools practical for the design of modern radio systems. To reduce computation time, ray-tracing routines must be app lied only to those areas where rays are likely to exist. This is achieved b y using ray-path search algorithms prior to performing any actual ray traci ng. In this paper, an efficient ray-path search algorithm is presented. Fir st, a two-dimensional version is described, which is valid for indoor and m icrocell studies. Then, an extension to the three-dimensional case is expla ined in detail. Finally, the software tool RadioTracer using such technique s is briefly described, and some comparisons between experimental results a nd computed predictions for indoor and outdoor scenarios are shown.