Urban Cellular Network Planning Imbalances in Wooded Streets and Parks [Wireless Corner]

Although the propagation of radio waves in vegetation environments has been widely studied, the actual situation is that the coverage of mobile-phone systems in vegetation areas still appears to be clearly poorer than in open places within our cities. The results of large measurement campaigns are presented in this work, providing numerical data that could be useful for correcting radio-network planning when parks or groves are around the base stations. An estimation of the reduction of coverage radius is provided based on such measurements, as well as various statistics, the behaviors of which seem to depend on the presence of vegetation in the environment. Finally, a proposal for improving the predictions by using a combined deterministic and probabilistic method is presented.