Propagation Measurements and Modeling of a 4G LTE Network in a Lagoon Environment

This paper presents an analysis of predicted and measured path loss over a Lagoon environment. Propagation measurements were carried out at 1800MHz, within a quarter of a year, using Huawei Technologies drive test equipment. Measured data comprising of the received signal strength was taken for the initial measurements, measurements after one month, measurements after two months, and measurements after three months. Measured path loss was compared against predictions made by free-space model, log-distance model, two-ray model, COST-231 Hata model, and Stanford University Interim (SUI) model. For all measurements, the COST-231 Hata model showed the best performance with root mean square errors (RMSEs) of 10.03dB, 12.38dB, 17.59dB, and 7.67dB for the initial measurements, measurements after one month, measurements after two months, and measurements after three months, respectively. In order to achieve a more accurate prediction, this model was optimized using the least square algorithm, and the optimized model showed improved prediction accuracies for the first three months of measurements, with RMSEs of 7.90dB, 9.28dB, and 14.82dB, respectively. Notably, results revealed an increased RMSE of 9.28dB from 7.67dB, for the after three months measurements. Overall, the average RMSEs of the optimized model showed 11.07dB against that of the COST 231 Hata model of 11.92dB. This accounts for about 7.13% improvements over the existing COST 231 Hata model. Generally, the optimized COST 231-Hata model could be used to characterize radio channels in related environments