A novel 3D ray-tracing model for precise mobile localization application

Abstract

Recent year has seen the need for precise localization for both commercial and government applications. The underlying building block for accessing the performance of the localization algorithm is either the channel measurement data or ray-tracing algorithms that are highly correlated to the empirical channel measurement data. However, the accuracy of ray tracing algorithm is highly related to the simulation of all possible propagation paths traversing through various structures in the realistic environment. Traditionally, most of the rays tracing algorithms have been well researched for planar structures. This paper presents a novel three-dimensional ray-tracing model for building structures with non-planar or curved surfaces. Methodology to overcome the problem in modeling scatterers with non-planar surfaces has been proposed. It takes into all possible propagation paths from any combinations of reflections, diffractions and transmissions from/through planar and non-planar/curved surfaces. Comparisons between proposed model and the measured power delay profile in an environment containing building structure with curved surfaces has shown good agreement and articulate the impact of including scattering phenomenon from curved surfaces on the power delay profile.