Applicability of Deterministic Propagation Models for Mobile Operators

Deterministic propagation models based on ray tracing or ray launching are widely studied in the scientific literature, because of their high accuracy. Also many commercial propagation modelling tools include ray-based models. In spite of this, they are hardly used in commercial operations by cellular operators. In this article we study the performance of ray-based models and compare them to the requirements of the mobile operators. We identify the main bottlenecks for usage by the operators and propose directions to mitigate these bottlenecks.