Impact of shadowing on wireless channel characterization for a public indoor commercial topology at 2.4 GHz

This paper presents a site-specific validation of path loss models for a complex indoor propagation topology at 2.4 GHz. More specifically, extensive RF measurements were performed at the Public Library of the University of Patras (for an operating 802.11g Wi-Fi system). The acquired average received power levels allowed us to validate the robustness of indoor RF models in terms of mean error and root mean-square error (RMSE) values and compare results with empirical data derived out of other commercial topologies. The shadowing deviation was empirically calculated as a function of path loss caused by all objects and materials contributing to the attenuation of the transmitted signal. Our findings confirm that in the presence of significant shadowing phenomena and signal obstruction as examined in this work, this novel method of site-specific calculation of shadowing deviation, which can be applied for any frequency of interest as long as the respective signal losses are empirically estimated, is by far the most precise in terms of path loss prediction and link budget optimization.