Path loss analysis between the north and the south of mauritius with some existing models for digital television broadcasting for summer season at UHF bands

After the official launching in October 2005 of digital terrestrial television (DTT), plans were made to carry out field measurements across the island. Field strength, carrier-to-noise ratio and bit-error-rate were measured at two antenna heights (4 m and 6 m) both in the north and south of Mauritius at UHF bands (470 to 862 MHz). In this paper, we compare the measured path loss obtained for the sub-urban northern area with that for the rural southern area and then with four propagation models, that is, free-space, Lee, Hata and extended COST-231. Firstly, for both areas, the results show that the path loss is not constant at various locations for a constant distance around the respective base station showing that the terrain of Mauritius is irregular. Moreover, for the same antenna height, the path loss is higher in the south than in the north by 5 dB to 20 dB depending upon the distance from the station. The effects of the slow fading effect (shadow) and fast fading effect are more pronounced in the south than in the north, causing higher probability of signal errors. Secondly, we found that Lee and free space models are not in agreement with the values obtained for both regions. However, observations show that Hata and extended COST 231 models give better agreement and hence, can be used to model areas in Mauritius.