Comparative study of Radio Mobile and ICS Telecom propagation prediction models for DVB-T

In this paper, a comparative study between the results of a measurement campaign conducted in northern Greece and simulations performed with Radio Mobile and ICS Telecom radio planning tools is performed. The DVB-T coverage of a transmitting station located near the city of Thessaloniki is estimated using three empirical propagation models (NTIA-ITS Longley Rice, ITU-R P.1546 and Okumura-Hata-Davidson) and one deterministic model (ITU-R 525/526). The best results in terms of minimum average error and standard deviation are obtained using the deterministic model and the NTIA-ITS Longley Rice empirical model. In order to improve the results, the tuning options available in the ICS Telecom software are used on the Okumura-Hata-Davidson model, leading to a significant increase in accuracy.