A quasi 3D ParFlow approach for the 3D propagation simulation in urban environment

This paper presents a quasi 3D ParFlow approach for simulating EM wave propagation in the urban environment. The approach extends a 2D ParFlow to simulate the 3D propagation approximately by introducing a transparent boundary node. Originally the transparent node is for simulating the wave propagation through a building wall. However by properly choosing the parameters, the over-rooftop propagation can be simulated equivalently to the energy penetrating through the building wall. The approach has been applied to 3 kinds of typical cell in an urban area in order to evaluate the accuracy of the coverage prediction. The comparisons between the simulations and measurements show that the algorithm is applicable for coverage predictions in mobile radio networks. This work was undertaken since a pure 3D ParFlow algorithm is not a trivial upgrade of 2D ParFlow and requires tremendous computation resources.