Indoor Radio Propagation Modelling with Antenna Placement Optimization

Sammanfattning: The use of wireless communication has grown rapidly over the last three decades. The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority estimates that more than 80% of all mobile traffic is received or transmitted from within buildings and the number is expected to reach over 90% in the near future. Meanwhile, the number of energy efficient buildings on the Swedish housing market has increased. This type of buildings blocks nearly all electromagnetic waves and makes it difficult to rely on outdoor antennas to provide sufficient coverage indoors. Subsequently, the need for indoor antenna systems has arisen. In this master’s thesis, a new antenna placement optimization algorithm is pro-posed. The algorithm aims to minimize the number of antennas required to provide sufficient indoor coverage, thus minimizing the cost of equipment and installation work. The semi-deterministic dominant path model was utilized by the optimization algorithm to predict coverage. Finding the most adequate dominant paths is essential to get accurate predictions using the dominant path model. This master’s thesis proposes a new method of finding the dominant path by employing the path finding algorithms, A' and Θ'. The resulting algorithms were tested and evaluated at three test sites.