Simulation and performance evaluation of GSM propagation channel under the urban, suburban and rural environments

Nowadays the Global System for Mobile Communication (originally from Groupe Special Mobile)-GSM technology becomes popular. GSM has potential success in its line-of-sight (LOS) and non line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions which operating in the 900 MHz or 1800 MHz bands. There are going to be a surge all over the world for the deployment of GSM networks. Estimation of path loss is very important in initial deployment of wireless network and cell planning. Numerous path loss (PL) models (e.g. Okumura Model, Hata Model) are available to predict the propagation loss. In this paper we compare and analyze five path loss models (i.e. COST 231 Hata model, SUI model, Ericsson model and COST 231 Walfish-Ikegami model) in different receiver antenna heights in urban, suburban and rural environments in NLOS condition. Our main concentration in this paper is to find out a suitable model for different environments to provide guidelines for cell planning of GSM Network at cellular frequency of 900 MHz.