VERIFICATION OF 3D RAY TRACING WITH MEASUREMENTS IN URBAN
MACROCELLULAR ENVIRONMENTS
Thomas Fügen, Malgorzata Porebska, Sandra Kn örzer, Jürgen Maurer, and Werner Wiesbeck
Institut für Höchstfrequenztechnik und Elektronik (IHE), Universit ät Karlsruhe (TH), Germany
E-mail: Thomas.Fuegen@ihe.uka.de
ABSTRACT
3D ray tracing has meanwhile advanced to a performance
that it can provide channel parameters such as delay
spread, Doppler spread, angular spread, distribution func-
tions of long- and short-term fading with high accuracy
for fixed to mobile and mobile to mobile communica-
tions. These parameters are absolutely required during
the specification phase in order to define the air interface
and a variety of other relevant system parameters. This
paper shows state of the art 3D ray tracing capabilities.
The 3D ray tracing model developed at the University of
Karlsruhe is described and verified with wide-band non-
directional and directional measurements at 2 GHz and
5.2 GHz respectively, showing a good agreement. The
proposed 3D ray tracing model can therefore be used in
order to extract parameter sets for the specification of fu-
ture mobile communications systems and to optimize ex-
isting ones.
1. INTRODUCTION
Various mobile communications, wireless LAN (wireless
local area network, WLAN) and wireless WAN (wide
area networks) systems have been developed in the last
20 years. They offer a wide range of services in vari-
ous propagation environments. The services range from
low data rates to high data rates for users with low mo-
bility to users with high mobility. Some of the systems
do an excellent job, like GSM, others have some or even
severe problems to provide the user properly in the ded-
icated environments with the desired service. One of the
possible reasons for this is that during the specification
phase the proper information about the communication
channel characteristics was not available or insufficiently
taken into account.
The communication channel can be characterized either
by measurements or by a wave propagation model. There
are several types of wave propagation models, i.e. sta-
tistical, empirical, semi-empirical, deterministic or EM-
based models. Statistical or empirical wave propagation
models attempt to reproduce, either directly or by statis-
tical means, certain characteristics observed from mea-
_____________________________________________________
Proc. ‘EuCAP 2006’, Nice, France
6–10 November 2006 (ESA SP-626, October 2006)
surements of the mobile channel. In contrast to them,
deterministic models are based on a detailed simulation
of the actual physical wave propagation process. In order
to produce a deterministic description of the wave propa-
gation, suitable formulations of the physical propagation
phenomena and effects are applied to a deterministically
described scenario (1), (2). The description of the prop-
agation environment is usually performed by a raster- or
vector database that describes the position and the com-
position of the material of the objects in the environment.
The modeling of the propagation phenomena is usually
based on geometrical optics (GO) (i.e. ray-optical meth-
ods) and the uniform geometrical theory of diffraction
(UTD). Ray-optical methods are based on the assump-
tion that the wavelength is small compared to the dimen-
sions of the objects in the simulation scenario (i.e. the
frequency is high enough) (3). If this is the case differ-
ent multi-path components, characterized by a variety of
propagation phenomena, can be distinguished (4). As the
determination of the multi-paths is based on ray concepts,
it is referred as ray tracing.
A new deterministic wave propagation model will be de-
scribed in the first part of this paper (Sec. 2). It consists
of a model of an urban propagation environment and a
3D ray tracing model. The deterministic model is com-
pared to non-directional and directional wide-band chan-
nel measurements at 2 GHz and 5.2 GHz carried out in
the city of Karlsruhe, Germany, showing a good agree-
ment.
2. RAY TRACING APPROACH
The 3D ray tracing model consists of two major parts:
a realistic model of the propagation environment and a
model to calculate the multi-path wave propagation be-
tween the transmitter and the receiver.
As environment a digital model of a part of the city of
Karlsruhe, Germany, is used (cf. Fig. 1). It includes
buildings, trees and the street floor. Buildings are gen-
erated by means of a vector data set that describes their
exact position and size. Each building is modeled as a
box with a certain rooftop type (e.g. flat roof, pitched
Figure 1. Digital model of the city of Karlsruhe with
transmitter (T1 − T6 ) and receiver positions (Rx1 and
Rx2 ).
roof, hipped roof). It is assumed that on average all
buildings have constitutive parameters of dry concrete
(εr = 5 − j0.1, µr = 1) (5). For a proper wave prop-
agation modeling it is essential to include huge trees into
the model. Solely the tree crown is taken into account,
the tree trunk is neglected. The crown is modeled as a
box, with an average hight of 3 m above ground. The
position and size of the tree crown is determined from a
morphographic data set. For the street floor concrete with
a surface roughness of σ = 1 mm is used (ε r = 5 − j0.1,
µr = 1) (6).
A ray-optical wave propagation tool is used to calculate
the channel between the transmitter and the receiver. It
distinguishes between different multi-path components.
Each path is represented by a ray, which may consecu-
tively experience several different propagation phenom-
ena. The propagation phenomena taken into account in
the channel model are combinations of multiple reflec-
tions, multiple diffractions and scattering. The modified
Fresnel reflection coefficients, which account for slightly
rough surfaces, are used to model the reflections (7).
Diffraction is described by the uniform geometrical the-
ory of diffraction (UTD) and the corresponding heuristic
coefficients for lossy wedge diffraction (8). Moreover,
the UTD slope diffraction coefficients according to (8)
are used to enhance the accuracy, especially for multiple
diffraction.
Diffuse scattering from buildings as well as from trees is
taken into account. Distinct scattering components result-
ing from tree trunks are neglected. To describe scattering
from an object, the surface of the object is divided into
small squared tiles. Depending on the energy, which is
incident on the surface of the object, each tile gives rise to
a Lambertian scattering source (9). The amount of scat-
tered energy per tile is derived from measured normalized
radar cross sections σ 0 . The corresponding values for co-
and cross-polarisation of buildings and trees depend on
the frequency. A detailed description of the scattering
approach is given in (10) and (11). Here also the values
for co- and cross-polarisation are given.
The problem of tracing all multi-path components is
Figure 2. Reflected, diffracted and scattered rays in the
urban environment.
known as ray tracing (12). Depending on the propagation
phenomena, different approaches of ray tracing exist. In
order to trace pure reflection paths, the method of image
transmitters (image theory) is implemented (13). Since
the proposed propagation model supports full 3D diffrac-
tion, Fermat’s principle is used to determine the diffracted
ray paths (7). For mixed paths image theory and Fermat’s
principle are combined. As only single scattering is taken
into account, the scattering paths are defined by the po-
sition of transmitter and receiver and the position of the
central point of the tiles, in which the surface of the build-
ing or the tree is subdivided.
Fig. 2 shows the result of the ray tracing procedure for
a single snapshot calculated in the digital Karlsruhe sce-
nario. The receiver (base station) is placed on top of an
exposed building and the transmitter (mobile station) is
positioned at a road crossing 1.7 m above ground. It is
clearly seen that the wave propagation scenario is very
complex and gives rise to numerous multi-path compo-
nents. In Fig. 2 the different components are indicated
by the bright lines. To keep track, only the 80 strongest
propagation paths are shown. Each ray experiences on
its way from the transmitter to the receiver a certain at-
tenuation, depolarization, phase shift, and delay, due to
the different propagation effects. Several reflections and
diffractions occur at the buildings in the vicinity of the
transmitter, which is typical for urban macrocellular en-
vironments. Part of the energy is reflected on a high rise
building leading to a high angular spread at the receiver.
Diffuse scattering from trees contributes to the received
signal as well. For illustration reasons, scattering from
buildings is not visualized in this example.
3. VERIFICATION OF THE 3D RAY TRACING
MODEL WITH MEASUREMENTS
In order to verify the model, it is compared to wide-
band non-directional and directional propagation mea-
surements at 2 GHz and 5.2 GHz. The RUSK ATM vec-
tor channel sounder is used as measurement platform
(14). The urban measurements are performed in the city
of Karlsruhe, Germany. The digital model of the mea-

Table 1. Description of the measurement routes for non-
directional and directional measurements (cf. Fig. 1)
route type length in m
non-directional 297
T1 − Rx2
directional −−
non-directional 319
T2 − Rx2
directional 100
non-directional 358
T3 − Rx2
directional 143
non-directional 100
T4 − Rx2
directional −−
non-directional 342
T5 − Rx1
directional −−
non-directional −−
T6 − Rx2
directional 73
surement scenario is shown in Fig. 1. To demonstrate the
performance in various urban propagation environments
(LOS and NLOS, wide and narrow street canyons, cross-
roads, open places) two different receiver positions are
chosen, denoted RX 1 and RX2 on top of an ≈ 38.5 m high
building. The transmitter is placed in a van and is moved
linearly along the in Fig. 1 indicated measurement routes.
The exact configuration between the receiver position and
the measurement route for the non-directional and direc-
tional measurements is listed in Tab. 1. Additionally the
length of the measurement routes is indicated, as the di-
rectional measurements are only performed along a part
of the indicated routes. All the measurements are con-
ducted during night and early morning to avoid the move-
ment of people and vehicles so as to reduce their influ-
ence to the wave-propagation.
The non-directional measurements are performed at a
centre frequency of 2 GHz. As transmit and receive an-
tenna λ/4-monopoles are used. The transmit antenna
is mounted ≈ 30 cm above the centre of the rooftop of
the vehicle, which corresponds to an absolute antenna
height of ≈ 2.1 m above ground. The receive antenna
height is ≈ 2 m above the receiver building. The mea-
surement principle of the RUSK ATM vector channel
sounder is based on band-limited periodic multifrequency
(multi-sinus) excitation. The measurement bandwidth is
120 MHz and the measurement time for one snapshot is
set to 12.8 µs, i.e. much larger than the expected max-
imum channel excess delay (15). The average trans-
mit vehicle velocity is 7 km/h. While moving, the re-
ceiver records the complex channel transfer function with
a sample time of 2.048 ms.
In order to verify the directional channel characteris-
tics of the 3D ray tracing model, wide-band SIMO (sin-
gle input multiple output) measurements are performed
at 5.2 GHz. The same measurement bandwidth as for
the non-directional verification is used, i.e. 120 MHz.
The SIMO measurement principle uses a single λ/4-
monopole as transmit antenna. At the receiver an uni-
−80
normalized receive power in dB
−85
−90
−95
−100
−105
measurement
simulation
−110
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
time in s
Figure 3. Measured and simulated slow fading compo-
nent for route T1 − Rx2
form linear array (ULA) is used. The ULA arrangement
is composed of 8 rectangular dual polarized patch anten-
nas. The average transmit vehicle velocity is ≈ 7 km/h.
The sample time is set to 3.072 ms. The maximum likeli-
hood channel parameter estimation framework (RIMAX)
recently introduced in (16) is used to resolve the multi-
path parameters of the measured CIRs. Obviously, the
angular resolution capability of SIMO channel sounding
is limited to the DoA dimension at the receiver only, since
no antenna array is used at the transmitter. The estimated
path parameters are: polarimetric transmission matrix,
direction of arrival (DoA) in azimuth, time delay of ar-
rival (TDA) and Doppler-shift of each multi-path.
3.1. Narrow-band verification
For the narrow-band verification of the 3D ray tracing
model the non-directional measurements are used. The
narrow-band behaviour of the measured signal is deter-
mined by the complex short-term and the real-valued
long-term fading component of the received signal at a
single frequency (17). The narrow-band centre carrier
at 2 GHz is extracted from the received wide-band sig-
nal for the corresponding considerations. The simulated
narrow-band signal results directly from the ray trac-
ing algorithm. The local mean of the absolute value of
the complex received signal defines the long-term fading
component (17). For its calculation a sliding window of
40 λ in length is used. The corresponding complex short-
term fading component is given by the ratio of the com-
plex received signal and the long-term fading component.
In Fig. 3 the absolute value of the complex received
signal of the measured and simulated channel for route
T1 − Rx2 is shown. The high values of the receive power
at the beginning of the measurement route indicates that
there is LOS condition. As soon as the receiver hits the
NLOS area at ≈ 20 s, the receive power is decreasing
significantly. It is shown that the simulated curve follows
the measured one in the LOS as well as in the NLOS area
very well. A measure for the quality of the ray tracing
procedure is the deviation of the measured and simulated
Table 2. Mean value and standard deviation of difference
between measurement and simulation in dB
route µE σE
T1 − Rx2 1.3 2.8
T2 − Rx2 0.1 3.2
T3 − Rx2 0.8 4.6
T4 − Rx2 0.2 2.2
T5 − Rx1 -1.3 3.8

receive power. The corresponding simulation error is de-

fined as the difference between the measured and simu- (a) Measurement
lated values in dB of the path loss at any time. The result-
ing mean error and standard deviation for route T 1 − Rx2
and all other routes are listed in Tab. 2. Especially the low
standard deviation of all measurement scenarios shows
the excellence quality of the wave propagation simula-
tion.

For the comparison of the simulated and measured

Doppler behavior of the channel the spectrogram is used.
Fig. 4 shows the spectrograms of the measured and simu-
lated complex short-term fading signal for route T 1 −Rx2 .
The gray scale indicates the normalized power in dB.
Both plots show clearly the time-variant behavior of the
Doppler spectrum. One can identify distinct continuos
(b) Simulation
curves in the plots, which correspond to the varying
Doppler shift of different strong multi-path components.
The strongest contribution has a Doppler shift of -12 Hz Figure 4. Measured and simulated spectrogram for route
and corresponds to the direct path. Most of the energy T1 − Rx2
of the received short-term fading signal is confined in
the Doppler frequency range, which is determined by the
receiver velocity. Contributions outside are mainly due Table 3. Measured and simulated average values of
to thermal noise (only measurement) and leakage effect the time dependent mean Doppler shift µ fD (Hz), mean
of the applied windowing. The comparison of the mea- Doppler spread σfD (Hz), mean delay spread σ τ (ns),
sured and simulated spectrograms shows a good agree- and mean azimuth spread σ ψR (deg)
ment. Even several high contributions with a Doppler µfD σfD στ σψR
shift of +12 Hz are found, e.g. at ≈ 30 s, ≈ 110 s, and
≈ 135 s. meas. −3.7 19.8 163.9 −−
T1 − Rx2
sim. −3.1 18.8 164.9 −−
The time-variant values of the mean Doppler shift µ fD (t) meas. 5.9 18.5 360.1 8.6
and the Doppler spread σ fD (t) can be calculated based T2 − Rx2
sim. 9.2 15.3 304.1 7.8
on the spectrogram (18). Tab. 3 shows the time-average
values of µfD (t) and σfD (t) for all measurement routes. meas. −5.9 20.1 214.9 10.1
T3 − Rx2
For their calculation only the Doppler frequency range sim. −10.1 15.3 241.4 14.2
between -15 Hz and +15 Hz is considered in order to re- meas. 3.4 17.8 118.2 −−
duce the impact of noise of the measured signal. Due T4 − Rx1
sim. 4.4 17.5 104.0 −−
to the applied Hamming window function the dynamic
range of each Doppler spectrum within a spectrogram is meas. 5.1 18.9 173.2 −−
T5 − Rx2
set to 43 dB. We conclude that the measured and simu- sim. 8.7 14.6 211.1 −−
lated values are in the same order of magnitude and that meas. −− −− −− 14.6
T6 − Rx2
the simulations reproduce the measured Doppler behav- sim. −− −− −− 13.4
ior with sufficient accuracy.

ing the power delay profile (PDP), which is directly re-

3.2. Wide-band verification
The comparison of the measured and simulated wide-
band channel behaviour is based on the non-directional
measurements. A quantitative measure is possible by us-
lated to the channel impulse response (IR) (18). In Fig.
5 the simulated and measured PDP for route T 1 − Rx2
is shown. The gray scale indicates the normalized re-
ceived power in dB, whereas the normalization is per-
formed relative to the global maximum of the PDP over

(a) Measurement
(b) Simulation
Figure 5. Measured and simulated time-variant PDP for
route T1 − Rx2
the whole time. Having a closer look on the PDPs a cer-
tain line structure is recognized. These lines exhibit the
time-variant received power and delay time of different
multi-path components. The slope of the lines is directly
related to the variation of the corresponding path length
over the time. Since the receive vehicle in route T 1 − Rx2
is departing from the transmitter, the delay time of the di-
rect path is increasing linearly. Roughly two different cat-
egories of propagation paths can be distinguished. There
are several paths that have the same positive slope as the
direct one. All these paths are impinging from the back
side at the receiver. Multi-paths coming from the front
exhibit a negative slope. Their delay time decreases with
the same rate as the one of the direct path is increasing.
The comparison of Fig. 5(a) and Fig. 5(b) shows that
the most relevant multi-path components are found. Only
few paths occur solely in the measured or simulated PDP.
A characteristic parameter for the PDP is the delay
spread. The time-variant delay spread σ τ (t) can be di-
rectly determined from the time-variant PDP. The time-
averaged value of the mean delay spread for all measure-
ment routes is given in Tab. 3.
(a) Measurement
(b) Simulation
Figure 6. Measured and simulated azimuth power spec-
trum for route T6 − Rx2
3.3. Spatial verification
The spatial verification of the 3D ray tracing model is
based on the azimuth power spectrum at the receive array.
The measured and simulated azimuth power spectrum of
simulation route T 6 − Rx2 is shown in Fig. 6. As for
the PDP the gray scale in the graph indicates the normal-
ized received power in dB, whereas the normalization is
performed relative to the global maximum of the azimuth
power spectrum over the whole time. The line structure
corresponds to the azimuth angle of different multi-path
components. The strongest line corresponds to the direct
path. Its azimuth angle at the beginning of the measure-
ments is ≈ 4◦ . As the distance between the transmitter
and the receiver is increasing during the measurements
and the orientation of the receive array is kept fix, the
azimuth angle of the lines changes with increasing mea-
surement time. Several other strong contributions can be
recognized in the measured as well as in the simulated
azimuth power spectrum. The horizontal lines in the sim-
ulation correspond to paths that are scattered at walls or
trees in the vicinity of the transmitter. In the measure-
ment these lines are ambiguous due to the limited signal-
to-noise ratio. But the same trend as in the simulations
can be found.
The azimuth power spectrum can be characterized by the
azimuth spread. The mean value of the azimuth spread
for the routes T 2 − Rx2 , T3 − Rx2 and T6 − Rx2 is given
in Tab. 3 showing a very good agreement.
4. CONCLUSION
The presented results take us to the conclusion that on the
basis of the proposed 3D ray tracing model it is possible
to characterize the propagation channel and to extract pa-
rameters for the specification of future communications
systems and the optimization of existing ones. Moreover
the proposed model can be directly used to simulate smart
antenna systems, e.g. to develop robust signal process-
ing algorithms for a dedicated environment or RF com-
ponents.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance and sup-
port of the MEDAV company and the Technical Uni-
versity of Ilmenau, Germany, during the measurements.
We would also like to acknowledge the German Re-
search Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft,
DFG) under contract no. WI 1044/19-1 who partially
supported the work.
REFERENCES
[1] G.A.J. van Dooren, A Deterministic Approach to the
Modelling of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in
Urban Environments, Ph.D. thesis, University of
Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 1994.
[2] L.M. Correia, Wireless Flexible Personalized Com-
munications - COST259: European Commission in
Mobile Radio Research, Wiley, New York, 2001.
[3] D.A. McNamara, C.W.I. Pistorius, and J.A.G. Mal-
herbe, Introduction to the Uniform Geometrical
Theory of Diffraction, Artech House, Boston, 1990.
[4] G.A. Deschamps, “Ray techniques in electromag-
netics,” Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 60, no. 9, pp.
1022–1035, 1972.
[5] D.L. Didascalou, Ray-Optical Wave Propagation in
Arbitrarily Shaped Tunnels, Ph.D. thesis, Univer-
sity of Karlsruhe, Germany, 2000.
[6] R. Schneider, Modellierung der Wellenausbreitung
für ein bildgebendes Kfz-Radar, (in German), Ph.D.
thesis, University of Karlsruhe, Germany, 1998.
[7] C.A. Balanis, Advanced Engineering Electromag-
netics, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1989.
[8] R.J. Luebbers, “Comparison of Lossy Wedge
Diffraction Coefficients with Application to Mixed
Path Propagation Loss Prediction,” IEEE Transac-
tions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 36, no. 7,
pp. 1031–1034, Juli 1988.
[9] G.T. Ruck, D.E. Barrick, W.D. Stuart, and C.K.
Krichbaum, Radar Cross Section Handbook,
Plenum Press, New York, London, 1970.
[10] J. Maurer, Strahlenoptisches Kanalmodell f ür die
Fahrzeug-Fahrzeug-Funkkommunikation, (in Ger-
man), Ph.D. thesis, University of Karlsruhe, Ger-
many, 2005.
[11] V. Degli Esposti, D. Guiducci, A. de Marsi, P. Azzi,
and F. Fuschini, “An Advanced Field Prediction
Model Including Diffuse Scattering,” IEEE Trans-
actions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 52, no.
7, pp. 1717–1728, Juli 2004.
[12] M.F. Catedra, J. Perez, F. Saez de Adana, and
O. Gutierrez, “Efficient Ray-Tracing Techniques for
Three-Dimensional Analyses of Propagation in Mo-
bile Communications: Application to Picocell and
Microcell Scenarios,” IEEE Antennas and Propa-
gation Magazine, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 15–28, April
1998.
[13] J. Maurer, O Drumm, D.L. Didascalou, and
W. Wiesbeck, “A Novel Approach in the Determi-
nation of Visible Surfaces in 3D Vector Geometries
for Ray-Optical Wave Propagation Modelling,” in
Proceedings of the 51st IEEE Vehicular Technology
Conference, VTC2000-Spring, Tokyo, Japan, Mai
2000, pp. 1651–1655.
[14] R.S. Thomä, D. Hampicke, A. Richter, G. Som-
merkorn, and U. Trautwein, “MIMO Vector Chan-
nel Sounder Measurement for Smart Antenna Sys-
tem Evaluation,” European Trans. on Telecom.,
Special issue on smart antennas, vol. 12, no. 5, pp.
427–438, September 2001.
[15] R.S. Thomä, D. Hampicke, A. Richter, G. Som-
merkorn, A. Schneider, U. Trautwein, and
W. Wirnitzer, “Identification of Time-Variant
Directional Mobile Radio Channels,” IEEE Trans-
actions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol.
49, no. 2, pp. 357–364, April 2000.
[16] R.S. Thomä, M. Landmann, G. Sommerkorn, and
A. Richter, “Multidimensional High-Resolution
Channel Sounding in Mobile Radio,” in Proceed-
ings IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Tech-
nology Conference, IMTC 2004, Como, Italy, May
2004, pp. 257–262.
[17] W.C.Y. Lee, Mobile Communications Engineering,
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1982.
[18] R. Vaughan and J. Bach Andersen, Channels, Prop-
agation and Antennas for Mobile Communications,
The Institution of Electrical Engineers, IEE, Lon-
don, 2003.