Propagation Modeling: A hands-on tutorial integrating ITS measurement data with site-specific techniques

Details

• Date: TBA

• Duration: 90 minutes

Abstract

Radio wave propagation models are developed to predict expected signal loss between a transmitter and a receiver. Along the path, losses are incurred due to free space propagation, terrain diffraction, and atmospherics, among others. In today’s world of dense networks and spectrum sharing, understanding and predicting losses due to the presence of buildings and vegetation (collectively referred to as ‘clutter’) is of particular importance.

The National Telecommunication and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) develops and improves radio wave propagation models to support communication systems. ITS has been moving towards a more open and public paradigm in the development of propagation models, which includes open-source development and publishing measurement data to the public. ITS is in the process of making public nearly six million propagation measurement points collected from a diverse set of environments across the U.S.

This tutorial introduces participants to the field of site- and path-specific propagation models that incorporate high resolution terrain, building, or foliage data through hands-on activities. Leveraging an online Juypter Notebook environment, participants will download and visualize ITS clutter measurement data. Participants will also download and process USGS Lidar PointCloud files to generate a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and Digital Surface Model (DSM) for the measurement locations. Lastly, participants will combine the measurement data and the environmental data to perform basic model evaluation of the current beta release of the ITM2030 mid-band propagation model, a model being actively developed for mid-band propagation and related 5G systems. Our short course will provide the foundational knowledge and toolsets to enable participants to develop empirical propagation models.

Requirements and Prerequisites

All participants will need a laptop with internet access. Tutorial resources will be accessed via a web browser, with no software installation required. Although the tutorial will utilize the Python programming language, no prior knowledge of Python is required as participants will be guided through the tutorial and provided with everything they need.

Outline

The tutorial will be broken into four core sections:

• [15 min] Short introduction on propagation modeling

• [20 min] Accessing and consuming clutter measurements

• [25 min] Processing lidar into a DTM and a DSM

• [25 min] Evaluating ITM2030 beta model

• [5 min] Wrap-up