An Indoor Path Loss Prediction Model using Wall

Correction Factors for WLAN and 5G Indoor Networks

Item Type Article

Authors Obeidat, Huthaifa A.N.; Asif, Rameez; Ali, N.T.; Obeidat, O.A.;
Ali, N.T.; Jones, Steven M.R.; Shuaieb, Wafa S.A.; Al-Sadoon,
Mohammed A.; Hameed, Khalid, W.H.; Alabdullah, A.A.; Dama,
Yousif A.S.; Abd-Alhameed, Raed A.

Citation Obeidat HAN, Asif R, Obeidat OA et al (2018) An Indoor Path

Loss Prediction Model using Wall Correction Factors for WLAN
and 5G Indoor Networks. Radio Science Journal. Accepted for
publication.

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Citation: Obeidat HAN, Asif R, Obeidat OA et al (2018) An Indoor Path Loss Prediction Model
using Wall Correction Factors for WLAN and 5G Indoor Networks. Radio Science Journal. Accepted
for publication.

Copyright statement: © 2018 AGU. Full-text reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-
archiving policy.
 An Indoor Path Loss Prediction Model using Wall Correction Factors for
WLAN and 5G Indoor Networks
H.A. Obeidat1, R. Asif1, O.A. Obeidat2, N.T. Ali3, S.M.R. Jones1, W.S. Shuaieb1, M.A.
Al-Sadoon1, K.W. Hameed1, A.A. Alabdullah1, Y.A. Dama4, and R.A. Abd-Alhameed1*
1
School of Engineering and Informatics, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK.
2
College of Engineering, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA.
3
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE
4
Department of Telecommunications Engineering, An Najah National University, Nablus,
Palestine.
Corresponding author: Raed Abd-Alhameed ([email protected])

Key Points:
 A modified Effective Wall Loss Model (EWLM) for indoor environment.
 Real time measurements and simulations for various indoor path loss models.
 Several frequency spectrum band were considered for evaluation purposes.

Abstract
A modified indoor path loss prediction model is presented, namely Effective Wall Loss
Model (EWLM). The modified model is compared to other indoor path loss prediction
models using simulation data and real-time measurements. Different operating frequencies
and antenna polarizations are considered to verify the observations. In the simulation part,
EWLM shows the best performance among other models as it outperforms two times the dual
slope model which is the second-best performance. Similar observations were recorded from
the experimental results. Linear attenuation and one slope models have similar behaviour, the
two models parameters show dependency on operating frequency and antenna polarization.

1 Introduction
The ability to locate a target object in an indoor environment has many potential applications:
e.g. in security, emergency services, health care and commercial fields (Pierleoni et al., 2016;
Suits, Farmer, Ezekoye, Abbasi, & Wilson, 2014; R. Zhang, Hoflinger, & Reindl, 2013).
However, it is difficult to provide accurate location by radio means because of the complex
multipath propagation within buildings (Obeidat et al., 2016).

Multipath propagation of wireless signals within buildings has been extensively studied in the
context of the deployment of cordless phones (Keenan & Motley, 1990) and wireless local
area networks (WLAN) (Borrelli, Monti, Vari, & Mazzenga, 2004; Crow, Widjaja, Kim, &
Sakai, 1997; Kong, Tsang, Bensaou, & Gao, 2004). Propagation from outdoors to indoors has
been studied in the context of cellular networks (Damosso & Correia, 1999). More recently,
there has been significant interest in developing indoor location technologies, in many cases
relying on the opportunistic exploitation of available WLAN signals (Zekavat & Buehrer,
2011) and deploying WLAN in the mm-Wave band (Moraitis & Constantinou, 2004).

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not
been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process which may
lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as
doi: 10.1002/2018RS006536

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Propagation models have been developed and can be broadly categorised as either predicting
median signal strength (path loss and shadowing) like Motley Keenan model (Keenan &
Motley, 1990) or channel behaviour (fading across time or frequency) like Saleh Valenzuela
model (Saleh & Valenzuela, 1987). Path loss models predict the signal level (averaged over
several wavelengths or a wide bandwidth) at a given distance from the transmitter (Keenan &
Motley, 1990), whilst channel models describe the stochastic or deterministic variation of the
signal level (narrowband) and the time-dispersion (wideband) at that location (Saleh &
Valenzuela, 1987). With the advent of multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) systems,
spatial channel models have been introduced. The 3D indoor environment comprises walls
and floors, windows and doors, corridors, stairwells and lift-shafts, as well as fixtures and
furniture which can be regarded (using radar parlance) as clutter (Remcom, 2017a).

Radio propagation through this segmented and cluttered environment can usefully be
visualised by a ray-optical model (Saunders & Aragón-Zavala, 2007). A complete physical
spatial channel model describes the angles of departure and arrival of rays, the amplitude,
delay, phase and polarisation between transmitting and receiving system. Rays include the
direct path, which may or may not be obstructed, together with paths suffering combinations
of specular and diffuse reflection, diffraction, scattering and transmission through walls,
floors or other obstacles. Adjacent buildings can provide additional reflected paths.

The delay on each ray path is related to the path length, whilst the amplitude, phase and
polarisation depend on the combination of spreading losses and losses due to transmission
through, reflection from or diffraction around obstacles, which in turn depends on their
structure and material electrical properties (Saunders & Aragón-Zavala, 2007). At
frequencies above the UHF band, penetration and diffraction losses tend to increase (Wells,
1977). In the mmWave band surface roughness becomes more significant, leading to an
increase in diffuse reflected components. However, the essential ray-optical geometry
remains the same, so that multipath components have the same delay, even if they are more
attenuated (Haneda et al., 2016; Pascual-García, Molina-García-Pardo, Martínez-Inglés,
Rodríguez, & Saurín-Serrano, 2016).
This highly complex channel behaviour is captured by ray-tracing software. However, there
are practical limits on the accuracy with which the detail of building structures or clutter can
be characterised or the extent to which the material electrical properties can be accurately
known (Obeidat et al., 2016). There are also compromises made in the number of ray paths
that can be found by the software within the constraints of a reasonable run-time and memory
requirement (REMCOM, 2017b).

The ray-optical view of the propagation mechanisms leads naturally to a description of the
channel in terms of its impulse response as given by (Hashemi, 1993). In the indoor channel,
rays have been observed to arrive in clusters, as modelled by (Saleh & Valenzuela, 1987).
The clusters can be associated with angles of arrival and departure in developing spatial
channel models (Spencer, Jeffs, Jensen, & Swindlehurst, 2000). The impulse response will
vary with position and if the terminal (or clutter) is moving, this translates into time variation.

Despite the obvious underlying complexity of the indoor channel, (Keenan & Motley, 1990)
looked to provide a straightforward engineering model for path loss. Their approach was to
consider the various walls and floors obstructing the straight-line path between transmitter
and receiver and to factor in a best-fit loss per wall or floor of each identifiable type, e.g. stud
partition (drywall) or concrete block walls, suspended concrete floor beams or wooden floors,
etc. When these losses were factored in, they found a residual free-space variation with

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

distance (i.e. power law index of two). A deficiency of their model was its tendency to over-
predict loss where there are many floors or walls (presumably because there is an alternative,
lower-loss path around those obstacles).

Other models have been proposed from simple power laws, two-slope or multi-slope models
(Lott & Forkel, 2001) (Andrade & Hoefel, 2010) (Pahlavan & Levesque, 2005) to those that
use the Keenan and Motley concept with some added sophistication to reduce the loss per
floor as the number of floors increase (Serôdio et al., 2012). Waveguiding, e.g. along
corridors can lead to path loss indices approaching one, whilst the presence of clutter within
the first Fresnel zone of a ray can lead to indices of 4-6 beyond a break-point as for ground-
wave propagation (Rappaort, 2002).

In this paper, several indoor path loss models and their associated parameters are examined
and tested. A modified method named Effective Wall Loss Model (EWLM) to estimate the
path loss is proposed. The performance of the proposed method was compared to other
related methods in terms of various frequency spectrums covering WLAN and millimetre
wave frequencies; the effect of antenna polarization was also studied. Simulated and
measured test results were presented in which it shows the proposed method outperformed
the other tested models. The organisation of this paper is as follow: Section 2 investigates
different indoor path loss prediction models, Section 3 describes the experimental setup of the
simulations and measurements and the procedure followed to estimate model parameters.
Section 4 presents simulation and experimental results and a comparison between indoor path
loss models and the modified model and finally conclusion is drawn.

2 Indoor Path Loss Models

Many models have been proposed in literature including one slope model (Lott & Forkel,
2001), dual slope model (Andrade & Hoefel, 2010), linear attenuation model (Davies,
Simpson, & Mcgreehan, 1990), partitioned model (Alsindi, Alavi, & Pahlavan, 2009), Motley
Keenan model (Keenan & Motley, 1990), averaged wall model (Lloret, López, Turró, &
Flores, 2004), ITU-R P.1238 model (ITU, 2012) COST 231 indoor model (Pedersen, 1999)
and dominant path model (Plets, Joseph, Vanhecke, Tanghe, & Martens, 2012).
2.1 One Slope Model (OSM)
A fast and simple model, also termed as simplified path loss model where the received power
at a point is given by (Lott & Forkel, 2001):
(1)

where is the received power at a 1 m away from the transmitter which can be estimated
using free space formula or experimentally (Goldsmith, 2005), is the path loss exponent
which is calculated using interpolation (Zvanovec, Valek, & Pechac, 2003) and is the
distance from transmitter. Path loss is dependent on range (distance) and path loss exponent
(Goldsmith, 2005). In (Alexander & Pugliese, 1983) various values of decay index are
presented, the values ranging from 1.2 due to waveguiding effects in corridors to 6.1 for
dense office environment (Rappaort, 2002). In outdoor to indoor propagation at 1.7 GHz,
decay index found to be 1.495 for corridor single floor; 1.524 through corridors in that
building and 3.25 for rooms single floor and 3.31 in rooms through building (Davies et al.,
1990).

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

2.2 Linear Attenuation Model (LAM)
Authors in (Devasirvathan, 1991) proposed another approach, the experiments were carried
out on range of frequencies (0.85, 1.9, 4 and 5.8 GHz), it was concluded that total loss is
the sum of free space loss and loss factor in the range of ( ) depending
on frequency and building (Devasirvathan, 1991).
(2)

where represents distance in metre.

2.3 Dual Slope Model (DSM)
Propagation within indoor environment was categorized depending on first Fresnel zone
clearance, the “near transmitter propagation” where no obstruction in the 1st Fresnel zone
and the path loss exponent is less than 2 due to waveguiding, and “breakpoint propagation”
when the furniture falls in the 1st Fresnel zone where path loss exponent becomes larger than
2, the model is shown in Equation 3 (Andrade & Hoefel, 2010).

(3)

where are the path loss exponents and is the breakpoint distance. Calculation of
the breakpoint distance is done either theoretically as in (Andrade & Hoefel, 2010) or
experimentally as in (Nuangwongsa, Phaebua, Lertwiriyaprapa, Phongcharoenpanich, &
Krairiksh, 2009).
2.4 Partitioned Model (PM)
In this model, path loss is estimated based on predetermined values of and distance
between transmitter and receiver (Pahlavan & Levesque, 2005):

(4)

2.5 ITU-R P.1238 Indoor Model

An empirical model accounts the losses due to penetration through floors within the same
building (ITU, 2012):

(5)

Where is the floor penetration loss which varies with frequency, type of floor and
number of floors between the transmitter and receiver ( ). Based on enormous

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

measurements, the model gives typical values for and for different indoor
environments which are available in (ITU, 2012), in the case both the transmitter and receiver
are in the same floor then .
2.6 Motley-Keenan Model (MKM)
The wide range of makes the use of one slope model insufficient (Keenan & Motley, 1990),
MKM considers the effect of walls and floors, including their types and numbers (Keenan &
Motley, 1990) (Lima & Menezes, 2005).

(6)

Where and are the free space loss, constant term (loss at ),
number of walls, number of floors, wall loss factor, floor loss factor, type of wall and type of
floor respectively.
2.7 COST231 Indoor Model
A more sophisticated model is given by COST231, which adopts the concept of Keenan and
Motley model (Pedersen, 1999). The model assumes a linear increase of loss as the number
of walls increase, and non-linear increase of loss with respect to the number of floors as the
average floor losses tend to decrease when the number of floors increase; the model is given
in Equation 7 (Pedersen, 1999) (Serôdio et al., 2012):

(7)

Where is the resultant wall losses obtained by applying multiple linear regression to the
measurements, is the number of encountered floors and is an empirical constant, is
wall losses of type and is the floor loss. An extension has been made so that individual
wall losses decrease as the number of walls increases which gives better performance
(Serôdio et al., 2012).
2.8 Dominant Path Model (DPM)
Dominant Path Model (DPM) is similar to Motley and Keenan method; however instead of
considering the direct ray, the dominant rays are considered instead (Wölfle, Wol, &
Landstorfer, 1997). It considers the main rays which contributes most of the energy, using
this model will reduce the dependency of having a fine detailed simulated environment, it
also reduce the computational time as it considers less rays (Wolfle & Landstorfer, 1998).
Minimum losses for DPM computed as in Equation 8 (Plets et al., 2012):

(8)

Where is the free space loss, WL is cumulated wall losses, is interaction loss which
depends on type of wall, operating frequency, and the angle of bend made by the propagation.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

2.9 Average Wall Model (AWM)
AWM was proposed by (Lloret et al., 2004) as a fast design model for indoor radio coverage
where few measurements are required as they are collected one meter away from the
transmitter and each wall in the facility. This model is similar to Motley Keenan model;
however the way losses are calculated is different, losses from the same type of walls are
averaged, the total loss after each wall is the result of multiplication of the average losses
with total number of encountered walls. The first wall loss is estimated at 1 meter way from
the wall by finding the difference between the path loss estimated from measurements and the
losses due to free space propagation as shown in Equation 9 (Lloret et al., 2004):

(9)

Where is the received signal strength (RSS) one meter from the first wall, and d1 is the
distance between the transmitter and the point which is located 1 m from the first wall.
Losses of following walls are estimated similarly after excluding previous wall losses (Lloret
et al., 2004). In order to exclude the multipath effect, the mean value for the losses of the
same type of walls is given by:

(10)

where is the total number of encountered walls. The path loss at distance d can be
expressed as shown in Equation (11), where L is the number of encountered walls.

(11)

2.10 Effective Wall Loss Model (EWLM)

The Average Wall Model (AWM) captures the changes in the propagation environment;
therefore, wall losses may be positive or negative. In fact, these losses can be considered as
correction factors rather than losses. Using the “average” will superimpose the effect of all
walls and then assume that all walls will contribute equally which is not necessary true. The
main problem with this model is the assumption that the main source of signal fading are the
walls; therefore, similar walls will affect the signal similarly. Although this is partially true
especially for millimetre waves as will be shown later, there are many other sources that
affect the signal strength (SS) level mainly multipath.

The AWM model superimposes the multipath effect; however, the effects of multipath fading
give a fingerprint about how waves in specific region behaves. Also the concept of averaging
does not reflect a scientific impact as it is unlikely that the last wall loss will affect the
measurements at locations much before that wall. Another limitation to the AWM that it does
not consider the effect of Line-of-Sight (LOS) propagation where path loss exponent will be
less than the free space path loss exponent due to waveguiding effect.

Due to these limitations, we adopt the AWM with two modifications: first, the path loss
estimated at a point depends on the losses due to the encountered wall only rather than using
the concept of averaging. The second modification includes the effect of path loss exponent in
the region between the transmitter and the first wall which may be affected by waveguiding
effect. For Non-line-of-Sight propagation areas (NLOS) the effect of path loss exponents is

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

already embedded with the wall correction factors. In order to distinguish it from the AWM,
we refer to the last modification as Effective Wall Loss Model (EWLM). The path loss at
distance d can be expressed as:

(12)

Where n is 2 for NLOS propagation, while for LOS propagation it is estimated by best fitting,
L is the number of encountered walls. It is worth mentioning that in Equation 11
depends on total wall losses of the same type; therefore, applying Equation 11 will consider
the effect of walls before and after the point of interest. Walls after the point of interest are
unlikely to contribute significantly to the RSS compared to those before the point; therefore,
EWLM considers the effect of walls which are only before the point of interest. Even if the
walls are of the same type both models will work differently as shown in the incoming
sections; however, they will have similar results after the last encountered wall where
( ).
3 Methodology and Experimental setup
In the first part of our analysis, different indoor path prediction models were examined and
compared to the EWLM using data obtained from ray tracing software called Wireless
Insite® which has been extensively validated, especially for the UHF band (Medeđović,
Veletić, & Blagojević, 2012) and for 802.11ac frequencies (Dama, Abd-Alhameed, Salazar-
Quinonez, Jones, & Gardiner, 2011). The adopted environment for the experiment was the
third floor in Chesham building in Bradford University. The model for the building was
constructed using the software.

Transmitter and receivers implemented in the environment are both omnidirectional,

transmitted power was set to 20 dBm, while receiver sensitivity was set to -120 dBm. Five
frequencies were examined including (2.4 GHz, 5.3 GHz, 28 GHz, 60 GHz and 73.5 GHz),
their corresponding bandwidths are (0.084 GHz (Wu, Hsiao, Lu, & Chang, 2004), 0.12 GHz
(Koivunen et al., 2007), 0.8 GHz (Maccartney, Rappaport, Sun, & Deng, 2015), 2.15 GHz
(Technologies, 2017) and 2 GHz (Instruments, 2016) respectively, those frequencies have
wide usage for indoor applications. We also investigated two types of polarization: vertical
polarisation (VP) and circular polarization (CP), settings for Wireless Insite are given in Table
1.
In the second part of the experiments, real time measurements have been collected from
WLAN access points (AP) distributed in the 3rd floor of Chesham building at the University
of Bradford, those APs support Wi-Fi coverage on both 2.4 GHz and 5.3 GHz bands. In these
experiments, three APs were considered as shown in Figure 1. All APs are similar, this
includes the transmitter power, types of antenna used and bandwidth. For each AP, data are
collected over two routes, measurements are taken at 1 meter height with 0.5 m spacing
between each two measurements. The heights for AP1 is 2.2 m while for AP2 and AP3 the
heights are 2.75 m. A WLAN scanner software called inSSIDer® was used to collect the
measurements using a laptop with a calibrated 802.11a/b/g/ac card adapter, these
measurements are averaged to remove the effect of fast fading, the RSS reading is updated
every one second.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

This experiment was limited for a single floor only; in this case the comparison includes
OSM, DSM, LAM, PM, MKM, AWM and EWLM (DPM is included in the experimental
part only). For single floor analysis, the ITU model and the COST-231 model are the same as
the OSM and MKM respectively, further analysis for multi floor propagation are subject for
further publication.

A valid comparison between the different modelling approaches requires that each model is
applied to the same dataset in order to predict parameters. MATLAB is used to estimate the
parameter values which provide the best fit to the data. Typical data are shown in Table 2.
Table 3 summarises the different parameters used in each model.

Having generated the best fit parameters, these same values are used to predict the RSS along
various routes. Model predicted RSS is calculated for each model using the equations in
Section 2. The model-predicted RSS values for each route and frequency are compared with
the data available from measurements and from Wireless InSite ray-tracing simulations.

Error vector distance is estimated between the model-predicted RSS values and the data from
Wireless Insite simulations or measurements, then the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of
this vector is calculated. The smaller the RMSE the better model performance.

In (Plets et al., 2012) authors formulate a generalised formula for the DPM to be applied for
different types of building. Since Ray tracing and DPM are two distinct approaches to
estimate SS, analysis for DPM is performed only on data collected from real time
measurements. In the experimental part DPM results were compared to other models at both
investigated frequencies. As recommended by authors in (Plets et al., 2012), DPM parameter
values are taken from (Plets et al., 2012) and (Y. Zhang & Hwang, 1994).

It’s worth mentioning that for the EWLM after each wall the model makes a correction factor
either by adding gain or adding loss in order to fit the simulations/measurements. MKM
assumes values for wall losses such that it makes the best fit for all simulations (in case of ray
tracing) or measurements (in case of actual measurements) from all different routes, these
losses are different from correction factors used by AWM and EWLM. OSM, DSM and
LAM look for the best fitting for the simulations/measurements (different values for and
can be used to describe the propagation channels within corridors and rooms. DPM use the
cumulated wall losses and interaction losses; this is required to identify all possible direct
paths and their corresponding bent angles as mentioned in (Plets et al., 2012). After that,
cumulated wall losses and interaction losses are calculated using Table 4 and Figure 6 in
(Plets et al., 2012).

As shown in Figure 1, measurements are taken from AP1 on the yellow routes, while they
were taken from AP2 and AP3 on the red and blue routes respectively. The simulation
includes many routes within the floor to cover different scenario and to verify the
observations. Figure 2 shows a 3D view for the simulated environment; the colours are
different for different features. Material dependence on operating frequency plays a major role
in determining the radio coverage, as shown in Equation 13, the attenuation rate (dB/m) is a
function of conductivity and relative permittivity r (ITU, 2015).

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

 (13)

However both are functions of the operating frequency as shown in Equations 14 and 15
respectively (ITU, 2015):
(14)
(15)

Where and are given by (ITU, 2015). As the operating frequency is changing, the
interaction between waves and building material will change accordingly. Table 4 shows the
values of and adopted in our experiment which are calculated using Equations 14 and
15.

4 Results and Discussion

4.1 Simulation Results

Table 5 summarises the simulation results for the examples presented in this paper, where
row 1, 2, 3 and 4 represent RMSE for the examined indoor path loss prediction models of
different routes in the environment at 5.3 GHz using VP antenna, 2.4 GHz using VP antenna,
73.5 GHz using CP antenna and 60 GHz using CP antenna respectively.

A comparison between different indoor path loss models at 5.3 GHz using vertical polarized
antenna is shown in Figure 3; RMSE of the examined models are presented in Table 5, row 1.
In this scenario, the EWLM outperforms other models as it was able to capture the changes in
the environments. After each wall, the model makes a correction factor either adding gain or
adding loss to fit the simulation data. In the AWM, the first two walls loss give positive gain
to the averaging, as a result the model underestimates SS fading. MKM works fine as long
the signal level follows semi-monotonic decrease.

As provided from the RMSE values, both OSM and LAM models show low performance;
this may be due the difficulty to model the simulation data with a monotonic function. The
DSM uses two slopes to describe the changes in the environment. Due to this flexibility, it
has better results compared to OSM. Finally, the PM has different path loss exponents;
however, it shows good performance if the test environment has similar path loss exponents
to the model.

In Figure 4, the mean SS level decays slowly with distance, the RMSE of the examined
models are presented in Table 5, row 2. EWLM model has the best performance; while OSM
has the second best performance as the path loss exponent found to be around 2, this may be
regarded due to waveguiding effect. The DSM has lower performance compared to OSM,
although this model uses two path loss exponents which gives more flexibility, the model
requires more data in order to provide accurate prediction. In this scenario and using lower
frequencies, there will not be much losses due to propagation through drywall. As a result,
the correction factors will have less significant effect; however considering the waveguiding

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

effect gives EWLM advantage over AWM as seen in Figure 4. While at higher frequencies,
propagation through these walls will lead to greater losses; therefore, the correction factors
will have more impact as shown in Figure 5.

In Figure 5 simulation results are presented for the same route whose results are shown in
Figure 4; but at higher frequency. The RMSE of the examined models are presented in Table
5, row 3. In comparison, models which use free space path loss exponent ( =2) and add walls
losses (i.e. EWLM, AWM and MKM) or models use fixed values of like PM are both
expected to have better performance, this is due to fact that wall losses tend to be greater as
frequency increases as indicated in the metrics Table 5. At higher frequencies, walls
contribute to loss significantly; as a result, the OSM will have less accurate estimation while
the DSM has advantage from having two slopes and hence shows more stability.

In Figure 6 many models predicts the SS sufficiently in the first 11 m and in the last 7 m;
however SS level follows unpredicted behaviour in the 11-14 m window where most of them
find difficulty to capture these changes as provided by their corresponding RMSE values
which are presented in Table 5, row 4, in this scenario the MKM has the best performance.

Through the experiment, the average RMSE shows an increase as frequency increases as
shown in Table 6. Almost all models have larger RMSE values at 28 and 60 GHz compared
to the 73.5 GHz band. This increase varies from one model to another as shown in the table,
in performance comparison for the models using VP antenna CP antenna, the table shows that
for AWM, OSM, MKM, LAM and PM have higher RMSE for VP antenna. The EWLM has
similar performance for both types of antenna especially for mm-wave frequencies.

As mentioned earlier, MKM adopts values for wall losses to give best fit for simulations;
Table 7 shows the values given for drywalls and concrete walls for the used frequencies;
losses for concrete walls and drywall tend to increase with frequency. They also tend to be
larger in the case of VP compared to CP; this is because when a singly reflected CP signal
with angle of incidence is greater than Brewster angle it will be orthogonal to the line of sight
(LOS) component which leads to reduction in multipath interference (ITU, 2012), moving
further away from the transmitter incidence angles become greater than the Brewster angle.

Figure 7 presents a RSS comparative behaviour with distance between VP and CP at 28 GHz,
the higher SS in the CP case as receiver is moving further away from the AP can be explained
by the effect of the multipath interference reduction as mentioned above. As shown in the
incoming discussion, the examined model parameters are found to have less values in the
case of CP.

The average path loss exponent versus operating frequency for OSM is plotted in Figure 8;
for VP antenna, tends to increase as frequency increases. However, in the case of CP
antenna average value of tends to decrease as frequency exceeds 28 GHz. This is may be
explained due to radio coverage reduction occurred as frequency increased; hence, a lower
value for is obtained.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

The value of for the corridor shown in Figure 1 tends to have slight dependency on the
examined frequencies as it has almost fixed value equivalent to 0.9 in the case of VP and
(0.6-0.9) in the case of CP.

Path loss exponent is influenced by changes in frequency, polarization and depending on

route location within the floor. For example, using 60 GHz and CP antenna, in corridor
routes due to waveguiding effect found to have a value of 1, while using VP antenna for the
same route it has a value of 1.7. In the case where path is between rooms, where walls are
made from concrete, using VP antenna, reached a value of 5.

The relationship between average attenuation factor and frequency for LAM model is shown
in Figure 9. As expected increases as frequency increases, VP antenna has higher
attenuation factor than circular polarization antenna. The mean value for for VP and CP
are: 0.67 dB/m and 0.367 dB/m respectively. Considering Figure 8 and Figure 9, a similarity
between OSM and LAM is observed, as the variation of n and a are very similar for many
routes on different frequencies and polarization.

This also is proved by Figure 10, as shown both models have similar performance provided
from their corresponding RMSE for almost 40% of tested scenarios. Whilst OSM has better
performance for frequencies 2.4, 5.3 and 28 GHz, LAM has better performance for
frequencies over 28 GHz. The figure also presents PM performance which shows the poorest
performance among all the models due to its limitation by having fixed path loss exponents
over predefined distances; however the model seems to have better performance for 60 and
73.5 GHz.

A comparison between OSM, DSM and MKM is demonstrated in Figure 11. DSM
outperforms both OSM and MKM as it has less RMSE compared to OSM for almost 72.5 %
of tested scenarios and less RMSE compared to MKM for 60.8 % of tested scenarios. For
low frequencies range of this experiment DSM outperforms MKM, while for millimetre
waves MKM has better performance. This can be regarded to the effect of wall losses in SS
fading which is considered by MKM. OSM and DSM show similar pattern with obvious
advantage for the DSM, due to the latter flexibility as it has two values for . The model can
capture propagation changes in the environment more efficiently; the gap between the two
models increases as frequency increases. On the other hand, MKM outperforms OSM as it
has less RSME for almost 62.75 % of tested scenarios. It can also be observed that for higher
frequencies, both DSM and MKM are preferable compared to OSM.

A comparison between EWLM, AWM and MKM is shown in Figure 12. EWLM shows
better performance than MKM and AWM for almost 78.4% and 80.4% of tested scenarios
respectively. The model has such advantage because the use of effective wall correction
factors enhances SS prediction significantly. When comparing AWM with MKM, the former
has less RMSE for almost 56.9% of tested scenarios. The AWM has also better performance
in the 2.4, 5.3, 73.5 GHz regions, while it has comparable performance at the 60 GHz. It may
be observed that at 28 GHz the AWM has lower performance. This is due to the effect of
averaging with makes SS prediction less accurate at higher frequencies; however, as
frequency increases the radio wave coverage becomes smaller. Therefore, the encountered
walls become less, in such case the AWM works better. It was also observed that when all the

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

walls encountered are from the same type (i.e. either all are concrete or drywall) the
performance of AWM is always lower than EWLM.

Considering models performance at all frequencies, DSM shows the second-best

performance, a comparison between EWLM and DSM is presented in Figure 13; the metrics
show better performance for EWLM as it has less RMSE for almost 66.67% of the tested
scenarios. At 2.4 GHz DSM has comparable performance with the EWLM; however, as the
operating frequency increases EWLM tends to have better results. This is due to considering
effects of wall losses as mentioned earlier.

The average error for most models reaches maximum at 28 GHz. This can be explained as
follow: as the frequency increases the radio coverage tends to become shorter, so it will have
less error. Although at 28 GHz the coverage was less compared to 5.3 and 2.4 GHz; however,
signal variations tend to be greater; therefore, errors are greater. While at 60 GHz and 73.5
GHz the radio coverage becomes much smaller; thus, errors are less compared to 28 GHz.
One interesting observation noted, although both 60 GHz and 73.5 GHz share the same radio
coverage, errors at 60 GHz are greater; this might be because the 60 GHz has more
fluctuations compared to 73.5 GHz.

Although AWM has the advantage for being fast prediction model, it comes at the expense of
accuracy. EWLM combines accuracy and speed. The PM has the lowest performance as it
has pre-determined values for , in comparison to EWLM it has less RMSE for less than
7.8% of tested scenarios.

The order of the best models according to their RMSE values is EWLM, DSM, MKM,
AWM, OSM, LAM then PM; their respective average RMSE for all scenarios at all
frequencies are shown in Table 8. EWLM has the best performance while PM has the worst
performance.
Table 8 also shows the percentage of having the least RMSE for each model over all
scenarios and frequencies; EWLM was considered as the one with the least RMSE for 51%
of all scenarios while DSM has a percentage of 22%. Considering these results EWLM is an
attractive model especially for millimetre wave frequency usage.

A comparison between the EWLM with no modification (where n=2 for all scenarios) and
with enhancement (n is estimated by best fitting for LOS propagation and 2 for NLOS
propagation) is presented in Figure 14, on average the RMSE for all frequencies had reduced
by about 1 dB. Compared to other models “EWLM with no modification” had the least
RMSE for 27.45% of all tested scenarios; however by considering the effect of LOS and
waveguiding effect the percentage was enhanced to 51% as mentioned above.

In Figure 15 correction factor for concrete wall found to increase linearly with increasing the
operating frequency in the range of (5.3-60 GHz) for both VP and CP cases. While correction
factor for drywall tend to vary linearly with frequency range (2.4-73.5 GHz) for VP and in
the range (5.3-60 GHz) for CP. For both types of wall, mean wall correction factor tends to
be larger for VP compared to CP especially for large frequencies.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

4.2 Experimental Results

The experimental study in this paper includes same models investigated in the simulation part
in addition to DPM. Figure 1 represents measurements collected in 3rd floor, measurements
were taken in different routes to examine more possible scenarios where walls are made from
concrete and drywalls. It was observed that radio coverage for 5 GHz band is slightly larger
than radio coverage for 2.4 GHz band, this can be explained as the former’s effective radiated
power (ERP) is much larger.

A comparison between investigated models is presented in Figure 16 where data are collected
from route 2-2 (shown in Figure 1) at 5.3 GHz. It’s expected to have a semi-monotonic RSS
decaying. The RMSE for the EWLM, AWM, OSM, LAM, PM, MKM DSM and DPM in dB
are: 4.2892, 5.52, 6.067, 5.4572, 7.62, 5.978, 4.9378 and 14.1928 respectively.

As the first wall is close to the transmitter the correction factor will add more accurate
estimation to the results, EWLM has the best performance, the AWM also shows a good
resolution; however it shows less performance compared to EWLM, this is due to the effect
of last wall loss on averaging which cause the SS prediction to be pessimistic. Since the RSS
follows a semi-monotonic decaying OSM, LAM, MKM and DSM show a good performance,
the PM use fixed values for , which underestimate the actual losses in this scenario. DPM
uses predefined values for building wall losses; however the performance was pessimistic,
this may be due to the wall losses recommended are not for universal use as authors claims;
also the model has no difference in performance from other wall loss models if the direct path
between the transmitter and the receiver is the path with least losses.

A comparison between all presented models is introduced in Figure 17, the total error for all
routes are averaged. For the 2.4 GHz, as shown from the figure and Table 9, the OSM, DSM
and EWLM have the best performance. Similar to observed results from simulation part,
EWLM has the most stable performance as the maximum error did not exceed 6.1102 dB and
the standard deviation (STD) of errors is around 1.156 dB. PM, DPM and MKM have low
accuracy, as the maximum error exceeds 15 dB, 14 dB and 11 dB respectively, while their
STD are 3.4306 dB, 4.1256 dB and 2.9566 dB respectively. The LAM and AWM have
comparable performance as provided by their metrics.

Similar to PM, DPM uses predefined wall losses; therefore, the performance was poor as seen
by the presented metrics. The advantage of using this model is limited to the scenarios where
the transmitter and receiver are separated by one/multi walls and there is another path which
encounters less number of walls; however, in many cases the best path is the shortest in
distance between the transmitter and receiver which return this model to be similar to multi-
wall models.

Using higher operating frequency, the EWLM has the best performance provided that it has
the lowest values for all metrics as shown in Table 10; the metrics are consistent with the
observed results in the simulation part. The AWM has the second-best performance and still
show good results in terms of accuracy and stability. The DSM and LAM show comparable
performances. The former performance degraded with increasing frequency; however, it still
have stable and accurate estimation.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

The OSM suffers from poor accuracy this is because of wall losses at higher frequency which
requires more than one path loss exponent to have accurate estimation. The MKM still suffer
from instability; however, it has better performance at 5.3 GHz this is due to the more effect
contribution from the walls at higher frequencies which have larger values as frequency
increases as shown in Table 11. DPM has similar behaviour to what was observed at 2.4
GHz; typical values used for wall losses using DPM are presented in Table 11.

Path loss exponent increases as operating frequency increases. Among all tested routes,
measurements provided an evidence of path loss exponent dependency on the operating
frequency. As observed from the measurements, varies in the range of (1.93-3.3) at 2.4
GHz and in the range of (3.37-4.35) at 5.3 GHz. The averaged path loss exponent found to be
2.83, 3.89 at 2.4 GHz and 5.3 GHz respectively. Linear attenuation factor also shows an
increase as the operating frequency increases. Among the six tested routes, measurements
from five routes provided an evidence of linear dependency of the attenuation on the
operating frequency; varies in the range of (0.4-1.6) at 2.4 GHz and (1.2-2.5) at 5.3 GHz.
The average attenuation factor for the 2.4 GHz and 5.3 GHz are 0.8166 and 1.6 respectively.

The averaged RMSE for all scenarios and frequencies are given in Table 12; among all
scenarios, EWLM has the lowest RMSE for almost 50% of tested scenarios, whilst DSM has
the lowest RMSE for 16.667% of tested scenarios. EWLM tends to have better performance
as the frequency increase that seems to be consistent with the simulation results. Similar to
observations in Figure 15, wall correction factor for concrete tends to increase more rapidly
as frequency increased while for drywall the steep was smoother.

5 Conclusions
A modified indoor path loss prediction model has been presented using ray tracing software
and then verified experimentally for 2.4 and 5.3 GHz WLAN frequency bands. In the
simulation part, the model was examined and compared to other indoor path loss models at
2.4, 5.3, 28, 60 and 73.5 GHz with different antenna polarization. In the experimental part,
the model was compared to same models at 2.4 and 5.3 GHz. In the simulation part EWLM
shows the best performance among other models for almost two times the second best model.
Similar observations were recorded from the experimental results. DSM showed the second-
best performance provided it is equipped with sufficient data points. OSM and LAM have
similar behaviour, and the two models showed dependency on operating frequency and
antenna polarization. The PM showed the poorest performance as it has fixed path loss
exponents.
Acknowledgments
This work is partially supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under grant agreement H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016 SECRET-722424.
All measured and simulated data will be available from the following link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14KhlYxKKObD0p4Nch7PtKiJ_TJ97d8XI/view?usp=sharing

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 Table 1 Wireless Insite settings for the investigated scenario.
Property Setting
Number of reflections 6
Number of transmissions 4
Number of diffractions 1
Number of reflections before first diffraction 3
Number of reflections after last diffraction 3
Number of reflections between diffractions 1
Number of transmissions before first diffraction 2
Number of transmissions after last diffraction 2
Number of transmissions between diffractions 1
Ray tracing method SBR
Propagation model Full 3D

Table 2 Example of data used to predict model parameters

Distance (m) RSS (dBm)

1 1 -32.22
2 8 -34.89
3 11 -40.22
4 16 -44.23
5 27 -54.22
6 30 -57.25
7 41 -66.78
8 44 -71.4

Table 3 Estimated model parameters

Model Estimated Parameters

One slope model Path loss exponent n
Dual slope model Path loss exponents (n1,n2)
Linear Attenuation Model Attenuation factor (a)
Motley-Keenan model Wall losses (Lw)
Dominant Path model Interaction losses
Average wall model Average wall losses (Wavg.)
Effective wall loss models Wall correction factors (Wi)

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Table 4 Material properties with frequency

Concrete Glass Wood Drywall

Frequency (GHz)

2.4 5.31 0.0662 6.27 0.0122 1.99 0.0120 2.94 0.0216

5.3 5.31 0.1258 6.27 0.0314 1.99 0.0281 2.94 0.0378
28 5.31 0.4838 6.27 0.2287 1.99 0.1672 2.94 0.1226
60 5.31 0.8967 6.27 0.5674 1.99 0.3784 2.94 0.2102
73.5 5.31 1.0568 6.27 0.7228 1.99 0.4703 2.94 0.2427

Table 5 RMSE (in dB) of the examined error (Simulation part)

EWLM AWM OSM LAM PM MKM DSM

1 7.5665 10.4207 12.4458 10.8654 9.849 8.3017 7.8459
2 5.2859 6.4431 5.6997 6.4315 8.5297 6.1118 8.1126
3 5.2702 6.3659 9.1779 8.118 7.2313 5.549 6.5214
4 14.9072 15.6219 13.115 12.9068 12.5806 11.2973 14.746

Table 6 Average RMSE (in dB) with frequencies for examined models

2.4 GHz 5.3 GHz 28 GHz 60 GHz 73.5 GHz

Model
VP CP VP CP VP CP VP CP VP CP
EWLM 5.0722 5.6069 4.6899 6.25176 10.844 10.845 10.458 9.6559 8.6377 8.6780
AWM 8.4641 7.1195 8.4319 10.2344 15.856 15.585 11.860 10.555 9.5655 8.8229
OSM 7.6314 7.811 9.0169 10.0235 15.451 13.589 13.741 11.72 13.811 11.089
LAM 8.2767 8.4406 9.5144 10.5070 16.672 14.114 12.976 11.815 13.596 11.141
PM 16.527 15.743 16.886 15.4893 16.91 16.165 14.288 12.386 15.266 12.471
MKM 9.8295 8.6542 10.093 11.0623 13.383 12.35 11.260 10.002 9.6996 9.0939
DSM 5.752 6.1476 7.4956 8.6941 12.593 13.785 11.342 10.078 11.137 9.3423

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Table 7 Wall losses using MKM
VP CP
Frequency (GHz)
Drywall Concrete Drywall Concrete
2.4 1 4 1 3
5.3 1 6 1 5
28 3 7 1 8
60 1 21 1 10
73.5 3 20 1 13

Table 8 Percentage of having the least RMSE (ordered by average RMSE)

Model Percentage of the least RMSE Average RMSE

EWLM 51% 7.6793
DSM 22% 9.26586
AWM 9.5% 10.4518
MKM 9.5% 10.5112
OSM 6% 10.9781
LAM 0% 11.3626
PM 2% 15.4435

Table 9 Statistical metrics (in dB) between measured and simulated data for the presented models at 2.4 GHz
Model Max. Error Min. Error STD RMSE
EWLM 6.1102 2.9334 1.1560 4.3707
AWM 8.4596 3.0472 2.0748 5.7672
OSM 6.5999 3.4202 1.2227 4.1568
LAM 8.1856 3.8566 1.7045 5.54635
PM 15.4375 5.7927 3.4306 10.159
MKM 11.4639 3.7119 2.9566 7.4469
DSM 7.0396 3.123 1.4079 4.6875
DPM 14.3069 4.3167 4.1256 7.7433

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Table 10 Statistical metrics between measured and simulated data for the presented models at 5.3 GHz
Model Max. error Min. error STD RMSE
EWLM 4.6941 2.4044 0.7903 3.60744
AWM 5.6672 2.5276 1.2646 3.9943
OSM 8.4177 4.4267 1.3921 5.7298
LAM 6.2044 3.3204 1.121 5.0591
PM 14.1389 7.62 2.2813 10.9763
MKM 9.0968 3.0752 2.1387 5.0392
DSM 6.6239 4.0949 0.973 4.7900
DPM 14.1928 3.9692 3.7557 7.7599

Table 11 Wall loss using MKM and DPM*

MKM DPM
Frequency
Drywall Concrete Drywall Concrete
2.4 GHz 4 4 2 10
5.3 GHz 3 12 7.5 12.5
*Wall losses using DPM from (Y. Zhang & Hwang, 1994) (Plets et al., 2012).

Table 12 Averaged RMSE (in dB) for all models

Model Average RMSE
EWLM 3.9890
AWM 4.8808
OSM 4.9433
LAM 5.3027
PM 10.5681
MKM 6.2431
DSM 4.7388
DPM 6.7379

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Figure 1: Experimental routes in 3rd floor Chesham building at the University of Bradford.

Figure 2: Simulated environment for 3rd floor in Chesham building, University of Bradford.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Figure 3: Indoor path loss prediction models comparisons for a route in the environment at 5.3 GHz using
vertical polarized antenna.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Figure 4: Indoor path loss prediction models comparisons for a route in the environment at 2.4 GHz using
vertical polarized antenna.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Figure 5: Indoor path loss prediction models comparisons at 73.5 GHz and circular polarization for the same
route in Figure 4.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Figure 6: Indoor path loss prediction models comparisons at 60 GHz and circular polarization for a route in the
environment.

Figure 7: Received Power comparison between simulated VP and CP propagation at 28 GHz.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Figure 8: OSM path loss exponent relationship with operating frequency.

Figure 9: Linear attenuation factor relationship with operating frequency.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Figure 10: Performance comparison between LAM, OSM and PM.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

 Figure 11: Performance comparison between DSM, MKM and OSM.

Figure 12: Performance comparison between EWLM, AWM and MKM.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

 Figure 13: Performance comparison between EWLM and DSM.

Figure 14: Enhancement on EWLM by considering effect of LOS propagation.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Figure 15: Mean wall correction factor relationship with operating frequency for concrete and drywall.

Figure 16: Indoor path loss prediction models comparisons at 5.3 GHz for route 2-2 in the environment.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.

Figure 17: Average RMSE for all models.

© 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.