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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Antennas Propag.
Sec. Signal Propagation
Volume 3 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fanpr.2025.1417976
A 3D ray-tracing based model for radiowave simulations in vegetated environments with wind-induced dynamics
Provisionally accepted- 1 Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Leiria, Portugal
- 2 Institute of Telecommunications (IT), Covilhã, Portugal
- 3 Departmrnt of Signal Theory and Communications, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain
This paper proposes an extension of a ray-tracing based model for radiowave propagation in the presence of vegetation, to account for the wind-induced channel dynamics in vegetated environments. The original propagation model uses various point scatterers with specific reradiation and it has been proven to be suitable for a wide range of scenarios. However, the swaying motion of the tree branches and leaves, as an effect of the wind, creates a constantly changing environment that influences the propagating radio signals in both amplitude and phase, resulting in signal level fluctuations. To this extent, a large measurement campaign intending to record and characterize the effect of wind-induced dynamics in vegetated environments, was conducted in a controlled environment, inside an anechoic chamber. Experiments included various wind directions and at varying speeds: stationary (0 m/s), low (1.9 m/s) and high (4.7 m/s). The dynamic re-radiation pattern of trees present in the radio path were recorded at 20 and 62.4 GHz signal frequencies. The available experimental data was then used to develop a statistical model which is sought to characterize wind-induced dynamics of the point scatterers' re-radiation function.Finally, the performance of the proposed dynamic model while predicting the received signal level fluctuations inside a tree formation scenario, was assessed against dynamic directional spectra measurements conducted in a controlled environment, for four different artificially generated wind incidences and two wind speeds, low (1.9 m/s) and high (4.7 m/s). This experiment proved that the proposed elementary model could be an asset on the characterization of the time-varying effects found in vegetation areas under wind influence.
Keywords: Millimetre wave radio propagation, modelling, propagation measurements, scattering, vegetation
Received: 15 Apr 2024; Accepted: 08 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Leonor, Fernandes, Sanchez and Caldeirinha. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Nuno Leonor, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Leiria, Portugal
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