A Novel Ray Tracing Based Multipath Modeling Approach for Site-Specific WLAN Simulations

Current propagation models used in network simulations neglect obstacles of a propagation environment and employ over-simplified assumptions that the received signal strength is a simple function of distance and the transmission area of a node is circular. These assumptions are in contradiction with the actual tests and the measurement results. To run reasonable simulations for evaluating the performance of a specific outdoor wireless testbed, a novel multipath propagation framework is proposed in this paper, which is based on the ray tracing technique and uses site-specific geographic data of the analyzed area. It provides accurate propagation predictions, and it does not significantly prolong the simulation duration.