Study on the Microcellular Radio Wave Propagation at Universitas Indonesia Environment Utilizing Ray Tracing

In the past few years, there has been a very rapid growth in the demands of communication and data transfer. In order to achieve higher data transfer, it is necessary to apply site-specific planning when designing wireless communication system. We are then focusing on the propagation in site-specific location utilizing ray tracing. This paper discusses the computational simulation of propagation path loss by ray tracing image method when implemented in the urban street canyon and the environment of Universitas Indonesia. This paper focus on analyzing the effect of propagation parameter such as antenna height and wave polarization at 900 MHz, 2.3 GHz and 28 GHz to received signal strength in urban street canyon and Universitas Indonesia. Based on simulation results, path loss exponent at higher transmitter height tend to be lower and path loss exponents at vertical polarization tend to be higher compared to horizontal polarization. In order to increase computation efficiency, we also discuss quantitatively about the convergence of ray numbers in ray tracing method. We found that convergency of reflection can be achieved by considering 2-time reflection for horizontal polarization and 3–4 times reflection for vertical polarizaton. The results from this paper can be utilized as a consideration in effective and efficient site-specific planning for wireless communication system.