Numerical studies of wave propagation through concrete walls using effective material property technique and FDTD method

Numerical modeling has attracted more attention on the studies of indoor wave propagation in the applications of wireless communication. The accuracy and efficiency of the effective material property technique are validated to test the wave attenuation in the UHF frequency range. Two models for FDTD simulations are employed and compared. In the first model, a periodic concrete block wall consisting of air and cement is directly divided into many cells with equal size. In the second model, the periodic concrete wall is replaced with an equivalent solid wall, which occupies the same volume, using the effective material property technique. With the aid of the effective material property technique, the cell number and computational time in the FDTD simulations are greatly reduced. The simulation results of the EM fields and power density distributions for these two different models are presented. Measurements of power density distributions are also finished in an anechoic chamber, and are also compared with those obtained from theoretical studies.