Evaluating the Performance of MATLAB's Shooting-and-Bouncing-Ray Propagation Model

In the field of wireless communication, accurate propagation models are crucial. This paper presents an evaluation of a high-fidelity shooting-and-bouncing-ray (SBR) propagation model, a topic of significant interest due to its potential impact on the design and performance of wireless networks. We compared MATLAB SBR simulation results with the ideal ray tracing results for three canonical environments: floor-only, rectangular tunnel, and rectangular room. Our numerical results indicate that the existing high-fidelity SBR strategies, such as using an oversized reception sphere, filtering multiply counted rays, and computing the exact ray paths, do not completely resolve the problems associated with the reception sphere. Substantial undercounting still occurs, and SBR ray tracing remains less accurate than image-based ray tracing. Further studies are desired to identify the cause of this undercounting. Additionally, we report on the time complexities of MATLAB SBR with respect to the number of reflections and receivers. These findings could serve as a reference for future comparisons.