Vertical propagation of radio signals in an eleven storey building at 144 MHz

An experimental study of vertical propagation at 144 MHz in a multi-storey building is presented. The study is relevant both to roof satellite transponding systems and potential interference to the SARSAT system from a densely packed population of personal computers. The polarisation in the case of the first application has been found essentially random at least in the horizontal plane and an empirical path loss formula based on free space propagation has been derived. The spatial variation of the mean signal strength appears in general to be closer to a log-normal distribution than to a Rayleigh distribution