A path loss formulation for wireless applications considering terrain effects for urban environments

This study examines propagation over buildings when the buildings are located on terrain features (hills). The buildings, which are represented by a series of absorbing half-screens, are assumed to lie in rows that are equally spaced along parallel streets, with the streets running perpendicular to the terrain slope. Numerical results are obtained using successive repetition of the Kirchhoff-Huygens approximation. A phenomenological model based on ray optics for diffraction over a smooth surface is proposed as a way to interpret the numerical results. The dependence of the model coefficients on the terrain parameters are obtained from the numerical results.