The influence of land usage on UHF wave propagation in the receiver near range

Scattering, diffraction, and attenuation of UHF wave propagation in the receiver near range (RNR) may cause significant additional path loss. Wave-propagation models for rural areas consider mainly the influence of topography and often ignore the effects due to land usage in the vicinity of mobile receivers. In some models, this path loss is accounted for either by empirical corrections or by additional knife edges. In this paper, new ray optical approaches for the calculation of the additional path loss for receiver sites within forested and suburban environments are presented. Typical macro situations are defined to describe the RNR. For urban areas, the additional path loss is determined by means of the uniform theory of diffraction (UTD), whereas in forested areas, a lateral wave-propagation approach is used. The resulting RNR model is tested in an operating global system for mobile communication (GSM) network. The results show good agreement with both wide- and narrow-band measurements.