Electromagnetic field studies in urban environment with a higher-order parabolic equation

The planning of networks for mobile and personal communication systems in built-up areas requires accurate propagation models, which are able to predict the radioelectrical coverage for small cellular structures. Although three-dimensional methods are ultimately needed to account for multiple scattering and reflections from buildings, in microcellular structures, a two-dimensional model may provide satisfactory results for small cellular environments. The aim of this work is to present a method able to compute, in a satisfactory way, the electromagnetic field that can be received by a mobile terminal located at the street level and surrounded by buildings. The field is calculated solving a higher-order parabolic equation in several sub-domains, obtained by the decomposition of the propagation domain.