The propagation characteristics in a cell coverage area

The received mobile radio signal strength data is affected by both terrain contour and man-made structures. The received data cannot be easily separated as to which part is affected by which. In a real environment the ground is never flat and man-made structures in each area are different. Finding the propagation characteristics such as the intercept signal level at a given range (1 km or 1 mile away from the base station) and the slope of pathloss along the radio path is a challenging task. Since both characteristics are affected by man-made structures and terrain contour in that area they are imbedded in the measured data. This paper introduces a method that can separate the effect of man-made structures from the effect of the terrain contour according to the algorithm of processing the measurement data with a high degree of confidence. These propagation characteristics are different in different areas, the proper ones are used as valuable inputs to the propagation prediction program to take care of the man-made structure effect. The next step is to work on a terrain database so that the affects of the terrain contour can be added to predict the local mean for each mobile in the area of interest. This model supports analysis within a cell coverage area by using different radial zones. Measured data from these radial zones can be fedback to the propagation prediction model to fine tune the model. The outputs between using 12 different radial zones and treating the whole coverage area as one zone is also discussed.