A Stochastic Ray-Tracing Approach for Maritime Line-of-Sight Channel Modeling

In this paper, we propose a modeling approach for maritime wireless channels based on a stochastic ray-tracing approach. Taking into consideration the line-of-sight (LOS) path, the specular reflection path, and the diffuse reflection paths from the sea surface, the maritime wireless fading channel is modeled by combining all the propagation paths arrived at the receiver point. In contrast to the conventional ray-tracing approaches where the propagation environments (and hence, the rays) are considered to be fixed, our stochastic ray-tracing approach assumes varying propagation environment caused by practical factors such as the sea wave. In this case, the locations of the reflection and receiver points randomly vary following a stochastic process. Based on the proposed channel model, we further investigate the deep fading effect in maritime wireless propagations caused by destructive combination of sparse rays. We show by simulations that the role of sea wave has two sides. Specifically, the sea wave is beneficial to compensate the deep fading in the areas where the LOS path and the specular reflection path have been destructively combined, while on the other hand it might induce more outage in the areas where deep fading has not occurred.