Cellular Mobile Radio Propagation Characteristics

(A CASE STUDY OF Globacom and Mobile Telecommunications Networks (MTN))

By

Author

Presented To

Department of Engineering

ABSTRACT
This thesis is on the study of Cellular Mobile Radio Signal Propagation Characteristics. Measurements of received signal powers were taken when the measuring device was moving outwards from some selected Base Stations along the Propagation paths, in outdoor environments (rural and urban). The variations of the signal in relation to distance away from the Base Stations were closely studied. The main propagation mechanisms of the radio signal such as direct propagation, reflection, and diffraction were considered. Effects of these mechanisms such as path loss, multipath propagation, and shadowing were investigated. In order to study these effects, two site-specific scenarios were chosen. The first scenario consisted of open/rural areas on some selected roads along which measurements were taken with a Cellular Mobile Network Analyser being moved away from the base stations. The second scenario comprised some selected buildings on Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) main campus. Here, multipath propagation and shadowing effects of the buildings were considered in order to study the characteristics of the received signal power levels. Using parameters of the base stations studied in this investigation in the Free-Space and Okumura/Hata models, values of received signal power and path loss obtained were found to fall short significantly from averaged values obtained from measurements. For scenario 1, the mean differences were +54.73 dBm and -42.81 dB for the received signal power and path loss respectively and the corresponding value for received signal power was +12.60 dBm, for scenario 2. These mean differences are too significant to be neglected. Thus, they constituted correction factors in the new proposed models which closely approximate measurement values. Finally, these new proposed models were coded using C programming language.