Analysis of Large Scale Propagation Models for Mobile Communications in Urban Area

Channel properties influence the development of wireless communication systems. Unlike wired channels that are stationary and predictable, radio channels are extremely random and don’t offer easy analysis. A Radio Propagation Model (RPM), also known as the Radio Wave Propagation Model (RWPM), is an empirical mathematical formulation for the characterization of radio wave propagation as a function of frequency. In mobile radio systems, path loss models are necessary for proper planning, interference estimations, frequency assignments and cell parameters which are the basic for network planning process as well as Location Based Services (LBS) techniques. Propagation models that predict the mean signal strength for an arbitrary transmitter-receiver (T-R) separation distance which is useful in estimating the radio coverage area of a transmitter are called large-scale propagation models, since they characterize signal strength over large T-R separation distances. In this paper, the large-scale propagation performance of Okumura, Hata, and Lee models has been compared varying Mobile Station (MS) antenna height, Transmitter-Receiver (T-R) distance and Base Station (BS) antenna height, considering the system to operate at 900 MHz. Through the MATLAB simulation it is turned out that the Okumura model shows the better performance than that of the other large scale propagation models. KeywordsPath Loss; Okumura model; Hata model; Lee model;