Full-wave study on the accuracy of ray-tracing in multipath environments

/sup T/he article examines the accuracy of the commonly used ray-tracing technique as local scatterers become electrically small, a situation often found in indoor environments. In this case, the high frequency approximation inherent to ray-tracing may not be satisfied and the accuracy of the method may be compromised. Accuracy is quantified here by comparison to a full-wave simulation technique in which the FDTD method is combined with a spatial transformation technique. Two configurations are considered: receiver in the illuminated region and receiver in the shadowed region of a wall of variable width. Results show good agreement between ray-tracing solutions and those provided by the combined FDTD/spatial transformation technique, providing further confidence in the use of the ray-tracing method for environments where electrically small scatterers are found.