2-D ray tracing model for the prediction of UHF wave propagation in microcellular environments

Ray tracing techniques using Geometrical Optics (GO) and the Uniform Geometrical Theory of Diffraction (UTD) are very effective in the prediction of radio wave propagation for a microcellular system. In the applications of those techniques, ray tracing is the most complicated and time consuming procedure in most practical cases. In this paper a very efficient `from plane to space' ray tracing model is presented, which is particularly suitable for applications of the ray tracing techniques in microcellular environments. This model uses an equivalent 2-D ray tracing algorithm instead of a complicated 3-D algorithm to solve space problems. An auto-generating method for efficiently building the database is also presented in this paper. Excellent agreement between predictions and measurements was found.