Realistic Assessment of Novel Wireless Systems with Ray-tracing Based Techniques

Ray tracing based on geometric optics can be utilized for generating propagation models for arbitrary and complex environments. These methods can be employed to determine important wireless channel characteristics such as path gain and the channel impulse response which in turn can be used to deduce channel capacity. In this thesis, a fully vectorial 3-D ray-tracer is developed. The simulator is applied to study novel wireless systems such as ultra-wideband pulse propagation in complex railway tunnels and MIMO systems employing closely spaced low mutual coupling meta-material antennas. The computational complexity of the ray-tracing algorithm is reduced using optimizations and via the development of a novel hybrid method that combines the efficiency and accuracy of waveguide models with the flexibility of a ray-tracer. The resulting simulator is validated against measured results and demonstrated to show good agreement. Convergence of the solution using the ray-tracing method is also discussed.MAS