Numerical estimation of RF propagation characteristics of cellular radio in an aircraft cabin

This paper describes large-scale numerical simulations of the electromagnetic fields excited by cellular radio inside an aircraft. We use a typical aircraft model and employ the parallel FDTD technique to estimate field distributions throughout the cabin. In order to validate the analysis results, the calculated electric field distributions are compared to actual field measurements in a Boeing 777-200 aircraft. Computational results of the 1-dimensional electric field distribution inside the cabin agree well with measured values. Furthermore, a simplified histogram estimation method for electric field strength in the cabin was employed to deal with the complicated EMF distributions inside the cabin.