Published in

MDPI, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 1(4), p. 19, 2018

DOI: 10.3390/ecsa-5-05731

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Radio Channel Characterization in Dense Forest Environments for IoT-5G

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

The attenuation due to vegetation can limit drastically the performance of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and the Internet of Things (IoT) communication systems. Even more for the envisaged high data rates expected for the upcoming 5G mobile wireless communications. In this context, radio planning tasks become necessary in order to assess the validity of future WSN and IoT systems operating in vegetation environments. For that purpose, path loss models for scenarios with vegetation play a key role since they provide RF power estimations that allow an optimized design and performance of the wireless network. Although different propagation models for vegetation obstacles can be found in the literature, a model combining path loss and multipath propagation is rarely considered. In this contribution, we present the characterization of the radio channel for IoT and 5G systems working at 2.4 GHz, focusing on the radio links blocked by oak and pine trees modelled from specimens found in a real recreation area located within a dense forest environment. This specific forest, composed of thick in-leaf trees, is called Orgi Forest and it is situated in Navarre, Spain. In order to fit and validate a radio channel model for this type of scenarios, both measurements and simulations by means of an in-house developed 3D Ray Launching algorithm have been performed, offers as outcomes the path loss and multipath information of the scenario under study. A geometrical and dielectric model of the trees were created and introduced in the simulation software. The path loss was then estimated as dependent of the radio link range for two species of trees at 2.4 GHz. We concluded that the scattering produced by the tree can be divided into two zones with different dominant propagation mechanisms: a free-space zone far from the tree and a diffraction zone around the edge of the tree. 2D planes of delay spread value are also presented which similarly reflects the proposed two-zone model.