Impact of Wall Penetration Loss on Indoor Wireless Networks

Building structures significantly impact the performance of indoor wireless networks. Specifically, wall penetration (WP) attenuates the electromagnetic wave, and blocks both the intended and interference signals. To evaluate the penetration loss in buildings with rectangular wall distribution, an analytical WP model is built. The analytical probability mass function (PMF) of the number of penetrated walls is derived in a closed-form expression and validated by Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that the proposed model has sharper PMF within certain smaller distance range than the Poisson point process (PPP) wall distribution model. Moreover, the comparison based on different base station distributions indicate that the proposed model has lower network coverage than the line-of-sight probability model and higher network coverage than the PPP wall distribution model in most cases.