Efficient and accurate urban outdoor radio wave propagation

Simulating Radio Wave Propagation using geometrical optics is a well known method. We introduce and compare a simplified 2D beam tracing and a very general 3D ray tracing approach, called photon path tracing. Both methods are designed for outdoor, urban scenarios. The 2D approach is computationally less expensive and can still model an important part of propagation effects. The 3D approach is more general, and not limited to outdoor scenarios, and does not impose constraints or assumptions on the scene geometry. We develop methods to adapt the simulation parameters to real measurements and compare the accuracy of both presented algorithms.