Efficient ray-tracing acceleration techniques for radio propagation modeling

Ray-tracing and uniform theory of diffraction techniques are already widely applied to site-specific radio propagation modeling for wireless applications. Software tools using such techniques may take considerable computation time in the analysis of the propagation conditions in a given environment even for a short mobile terminal route. Efficient acceleration techniques are required to make such analysis tools practical for the design of modern radio systems. To reduce computation time, ray-tracing routines must be applied only to those areas where rays are likely to exist. This is achieved by using ray-path search algorithms prior to performing any actual ray tracing. In this paper, an efficient ray-path search algorithm is presented. First, a two-dimensional version is described, which is valid for indoor and microcell studies. Then, an extension to the three-dimensional case is explained in detail. Finally, the software tool RadioTracer using such techniques is briefly described, and some comparisons between experimental results and computed predictions for indoor and outdoor scenarios are shown.