Urban site path loss prediction for mobile communications employing stratospheric platforms

Stratospheric platform (SP) has been recently proposed as a new wireless media to provide next generation of mobile communications. Propagation characteristics of such media especially in a typical urban site need to be examined. This paper aims at evaluating path loss for the link between SP and mobile station (MS) in a typical urban environment. We developed ray-tracing tool for simulation and it was then applied to the various positions of SP in terms of elevation and azimuth angles. As a result, the propagation path loss is obtained and link budget analysis for the application of SP-based IMT2000 is presented.