Numerical simulations of reverberation chamber

The focus of this project is to determine whether commercial general purpose raybased electromagnetic analysis tool (XGYD by Remcom, Inc.) can be an effective and accurate method of simulating a reverberation chamber and wireless communication within a confined and reflective environment, like a car. An introduction that includes the mathematical equations which govern the wireless channel is given in this memory, as well as a summary of the models, methods and strategies that we have implemented to preview the effects that the environment produces. In order to accomplish the goal of the project, it was first necessary to learn the management of the ray tool software, namely Remcom XGTD. With XGTD we were able to define the geometry of the environment and simplify it. On the other hand, other software like AutoCAD and Excel is also used. As mentioned before the main objective of this project is to evaluate if it is possible to use ray tool software in order to obtain real values. Different scenarios are studied; a reverberation chamber with an X-paddle, a reverberation chamber with a complex stirrer, a real engine compartment and two versions of a car, one accurate CAD model and a simplified model. The car chose was an Opel Meriva, since we have his empirical wideband wireless channel model. We found that the XGTD results are suitable to know the early-time field build up after the source is switched on, but cannot predict the steady-state fields of high reflective enclosures because of the intractably large number of ray reflections required for convergence. Numerical simulations of reverberation chamber Page ii Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank all my family, especially my parents, for the support I have received during my student years. I also appreciate all people I have known during the university, that they have been closed to me during all these years; especially to all the Erasmus I met, my UPC friends and all the UPC football players, because they also have had something to be in making this memory. I would like to thank the professor Olivier Delangre, who has been my tutor in this project and without his patience, knowledge and disinterested help this project would have not been possible; and to thank the professor Philippe De Doncker for offering me the opportunity to work in this project. I would like to thank the ‘Service de Ondes et Signaux’ of the ‘Université Libre de Bruxelles’ (ULB) for the technical support and the given facilities for elaborating this project. Finally, to the person who changed my life. Numerical simulations of reverberation chamber Page iii INDEX I. GLOSSARY 1 II. PREFACE 2 II.1 Origin 2 II.2 Motivation 2 II.3 Outline 3 III. GENERAL REVIEW OF PROPAGATION MECHANISMS 6 III.