1716 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 51, NO.
8, AUGUST 2003
Path Loss Predictions in the Presence of Buildings
on Flat Terrain: A 3-D Vector Parabolic Equation
Approach
Ramakrishna Janaswamy, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—Starting from a parabolic approximation to the
Helmholtz equation, a three–dimensional (3-D) vector parabolic
equation technique for calculating path loss in an urban environ-
ment is presented. The buildings are assumed to be polygonal in
cross section with vertical sides and flat rooftops and the terrain
is assumed to be flat. Both buildings and ground are allowed to
be lossy and present impedance-type boundary condition to the
electromagnetic field. Vector fields are represented in terms of the
two components of Hertzian potentials and depolarization of the
fields is automatically included in the formulation. A split-step
algorithm is presented for marching the aperture fields along the
range. Boundary conditions on the building surfaces are treated
by using a local Fourier representation of the aperture fields.
Several test cases are considered to check the boundary treatment
used in the technique as well as to validate the overall approach.
Comparison is shown with uniform theory of diffraction (UTD),
exact solutions, as well as with measurements.
Index Terms—Outdoor models, split-step algorithm, three–
dimensional (3-D) propagation, vector parabolic equation.
I. INTRODUCTION
S ITE-specific methods have been considered in the past as
an alternative to empirical models for predicting path loss
in outdoor wireless environments. Some of the most widely
used empirical models, such as the Hata model or the COST 231
model [8], are based on curve-fitting measurement results, and
yield quick and reasonable statistical answers. These models do
not take into account the details of the local terrain topography
or building database in the prediction step. Most site-specific
(or deterministic) models, on the other hand, attempt to solve
an approximate version of the problem of electromagnetic
wave propagation over terrain or in the presence of vertical
buildings or combinations thereof. These methods yield results
that are more representative of the local environment than the
empirical ones, but are much slower than the latter. Still there is
an interest in developing fast deterministic methods for better
network planning and antenna siting. Among the site-specific
methods, ray-based methods [1] are by far the most popular ones
for outdoor urban environments, although some investigators
have tried integral-equation-based methods [13], [7], [3] or
finite-difference-type methods [9] over irregular terrain with
some success. An entirely different paradigm has also emerged
Manuscript received April 25, 2002; revised August 7, 2002. This work was
supported by the U.S. Army Research Office, Research Triangle Park, NC.
The author is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003-9292 USA (e-mail:
janaswamy@ecs.umass.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2003.815415
0018-926X/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
recently—rather than working with the Helmholtz equation
(elliptic type) that leads to bidirectional waves and global cou-
pling of fields, some formulations have considered the parabolic
approximation to the Helmholtz equation, which assumes for-
ward scattering at the outset [16], [10]. Under the assumption of
forward scattering, the fields are only coupled along the principal
direction, but not in the opposite direction. The problem of single
or multiple knife-edge diffraction under the Kirchhoff’s ap-
proximation is one such example. Despite its seemingly flagrant
assumption, the parabolic equation yields very useful results
for long-distance propagation problems, as observed by several
investigators (see [16] for a comprehensive reference list). Most
of the formulations of parabolic equation are two-dimensional
(2-D) in nature, in that they assume propagation to take place in
a 2-D horizontal or vertical plane. The 2-D PE model presented
in [10] had an average error of 10 dB and a standard deviation of
8–10 dB compared with field measurements. It is generally be-
lieved that a full 3-D formulation that includes both vertically and
laterally propagating waves would not only reduce the mean error
but also lower the standard deviation of error to around 6 dB [15],
[14]. This is particularly true for small ranges [18]. Preliminary
3-D work with the scalar parabolic equation was reported in [23],
where reflection and diffraction by one isolated building were
considered. However, its implementation to realistic scenarios
with multiple buildings is neither straightforward not feasible.
A useful 3-D implementation of the scalar parabolic equation
over irregular terrain with gentle slopes was recently considered
in [25]. Finite-difference technique was used to discretize the
parabolic equation, and the Crank–Nicholson scheme was used
to march in range. As only scalar Helmholtz equation was used
as the starting point in both of the above 3-D formulations, depo-
larization of waves was completely ignored. A natural extension
of the 3-D scalar formulation to vector problems is to consider
three scalar equations, one for each component of the electric
field. Such an approach was taken by Zaporozhets [24], who
also used Padé approximation and finite differences to discretize
the various differential operators. Results were only shown for
perfectly conducting buildings. The three scalar functions must
be coupled at all points in space owing to the divergence-free
condition of the electric field in a source-free region. This will
effectively reduce the number of independent scalar functions to
two. In [24], the divergence-free condition for electric field was
only applied near an object and was indeed treated as a separate
boundary condition. The number of unknown scalar functions
outside the object was still regarded as three. It is not clear
whether such an assumption has any theoretical justification.
JANASWAMY: PATH LOSS PREDICTIONS IN THE PRESENCE OF BUILDINGS ON FLAT TERRAIN 1717

In this paper, we consider the vector problem of wave prop-

agation in an urban area comprised of vertical buildings on a
flat terrain. The buildings are assumed to be polygonal in cross
section (horizontal cut), have flat rooftops, and finite height. A
nonflat rooftop is, however, still within the scope of the present
formulation. The building sides, its rooftop, and the terrain
are made lossy to represent realistic conditions. Impedance
boundary condition is used on the building walls and ground to
uncouple the interior problem from the exterior one. The total
fields are expressed in terms of the two components of Hertzian
potentials, which become coupled at the building boundaries,
thus, depolarization is included in the present formulation.
This overall approach taken here is in contrast to the approach
taken in [24], where three independent scalar functions are
used to represent the vector fields. A principal direction ( Fig. 1. Typical rays in an urban multipath environment.
axis) is first chosen along which only forward propagation is
assumed. Waves are, however, bidirectional along the other two In the ensuing theory, the transmitting antenna is assumed
spatial axes. The principal axis is called the range axis; for a to be an extended, vertically polarized source, although a
highly built-up area, this axis is entirely arbitrary, but remains dual analysis would yield results for a horizontally polarized
fixed throughout the field computation once it is chosen. Under source. An time convention, where is the
the assumption of forward propagation, the scalar Helmholtz radian frequency of the wave at the frequency , is assumed
equation for each potential component is approximated by a for the sources and fields and is suppressed throughout. The
wide-angle, scalar parabolic equation. The split-step Fourier wavenumber and intrinsic impedance in free space are denoted
algorithm is used to march the potentials from one aperture by and , respectively. The free-space wavelength is de-
plane ( plane) to the next along the range axis. When noted by . The electric current density of the distributed source
an aperture plane crosses a building, interior and boundary located at is assumed to be , where
conditions are enforced within that region of the aperture plane is its current moment and is the unit delta function.
occupied by the building. The process is repeated at several Expressing the fields in terms of two -directed potentials, it is
locations along the range until the building is exited by the easy to see from Maxwell’s equations that [4]
marching aperture plane. Because of the finite widths and
heights of the buildings and because of the lossy nature of the (1)
walls, the two potentials can get coupled at building surfaces.
The overall field is computed within a region ,
where is the maximum dimension in the lateral (or ) (2)
direction about the transmitter, is the maximum height
above the ground, and is the maximum range from the where and are the scalar potentials arising from the elec-
transmitter. Comparison is shown for test problems vis-a-vis tric and magnetic currents, respectively. The superscripts “ ”
ray methods and measurements to establish the validity of the and “ ” identify the sources (electric or magnetic) that give rise
overall numerical procedure. to the potentials and fields. The total fields and
are decomposed in terms of a TE mode and a
II. FORMULATION TM mode with constituent fields

Fig. 1 shows a transmitter (marked T) and a receiver (marked

(3)
R) located in a multipath environment. Waves arrive at the
receiver via reflections and diffractions off of building sides,
edges, rooftops, and ground. In contrast to the 2-D model (4)
developed in [10], which included only vertical plane rays, the
model presented here will include also the laterally propagating (5)
waves (shown as dashed lines in Fig. 1) and is expected to
improve the predictions of the field strength. The main source (6)
of the backward wave is a possible building directly behind
the receiver, shown as a dash-dot line in Fig. 1. Even though The potentials are related to the sources through the inhomoge-
the uniaxial parabolic equation used in this paper ignores the neous Helmholtz equations
backward wave, its first-order contribution to the overall field
can be determined separately by ray methods, for example, once (7)
the forward propagated aperture field is known at the range (8)
preceeding the receiver. In fact, the Walfish–Ikegami empirical
model [1] is based on such reasoning. Reference [10] also where is the Laplacian operator and the magnetic current
discusses such an approach for a 2-D parabolic equation model. is assumed to be zero here. The TE and TM modes propa-
1718 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 51, NO. 8, AUGUST 2003
gate uncoupled on flat ground, but become coupled in the pres-
ence of lossy and finite-height buildings. In this work, we use
impedance boundary conditions to represent the lossy nature of
building surfaces and ground. If is the unit outward normal
on a boundary with normalized surface impedance , then the
impedance boundary condition states that [19]
(9)
For the most general case, the surface impedance will depend
upon the material constitutive parameters , where
is the dielectric constant and is the conductivity of the
medium, and the incidence angle of the incoming wave. How-
ever, if the material is dense enough , the
transmitted wave will be approximately normal in the medium
and it is reasonable to take the value of for normally propa-
gating waves. The surface impedance for normally propagating
plane waves is [2]
(10)
We will assume this approximation to hold on both the ground
and building surfaces, but with different values of material pa-
rameters. (If propagation takes place only over a flat ground, it
may be more appropriate to take the impedance to be that of a
grazing wave [11].) On the flat ground with , ,
and , (9) gives
(11)
Expressing the various fields in terms of the potentials using
(3)–(6), the boundary conditions on the ground at reduce
to
(12)
and its dual
(13)
The boundary conditions on the rooftop of a building will take
the same forms as (12) and (13) with replaced by
where and are the material constants for the rooftop.
On the vertical sides of a building, assuming , the Helmholtz equation
, , , and
expressing the various fields in terms of the potentials, we have
from (9) that
(14)
and its dual
(15)
On horizontal edges formed by the intersection of the rooftops
and vertical sides of buildings, we combine the boundary
conditions on the two faces. Of course, such a combination of
boundary conditions will be approximate and ignores the edge
condition that the true near fields have to satisfy. It may be
noted that the satisfaction of edge condition by the near fields is
not necessary to effectively predict the far-zone diffracted field.
Diffraction by knife-edge under Kirchhoff’s approximation is a
simple example. Hence, we regard the above approximation as
no more severe than the impedance boundary condition itself,
which will also become invalid near edges.
If the buildings and ground are treated as perfect conductors
(PEC), then , , and the boundary conditions
become
ground and building rooftops (16)
building sidewalls (17)
Combining these two we get and on the hor-
izontal edges for a PEC building. It is seen from (16) and (17)
that the TE and TM modes propagate uncoupled when the build-
ings and ground are treated as perfect conductors. Even for per-
fect conductors, polarization coupling will arise if the buildings
have sloping rooftops or nonvertical sides. But such geometries
are not considered in this paper. For the lossy case, mode cou-
pling will occur even for flat rooftops and vertical sides.
A. Parabolic Approximation
Equations (7) and (8) together with the boundary conditions
(12)–(15) and a radiation boundary condition at infinity con-
stitute the exact boundary value problem. However, their nu-
merical solution for long-range propagation problems requires
excessive computational resources, which current technology
cannot provide. This is due to the occurrence of full matrices that
are the result of global coupling of fields. Reasonable answers
for path loss can still be obtained by assuming forward propa-
gation at the outset [10]. To do this, a principal direction is first
chosen along which only forwardly propagating waves are per-
mitted. Let this axis be the axis and be known as the range axis.
In the transverse directions (i.e., along and ) waves are still
allowed to propagate in both directions. In a source-free region,
, with a second-order
derivative along the axis, is replaced with the wide-angle par-
abolic equation (PE)
(18)
which has a first-order derivative along the axis, where
(19)
is the transverse Laplacian operator. Derivation of (18) is simply
based on factorizing the Helmholtz operator into two factors and
retaining only the forward propagating operator [12]. Equation
(18) models waves that travel in a forward cone about the axis
and is causal in . Both and will be assumed to satisfy
JANASWAMY: PATH LOSS PREDICTIONS IN THE PRESENCE OF BUILDINGS ON FLAT TERRAIN 1719

Fig. 2. Plan view of aperture plane marching over buildings. The dashed lines show the outline of the buildings, whereas the solid vertical lines show the
intersections with the aperture plane.

this equation outside the source region. In the numerical solution is the wavenumber along the range axis for a plane wave trav-
of the parabolic equation by the split-step Fourier technique, the eling in the direction, and is the 2-D Fourier trans-
aperture field at is determined in terms of the aperture form of the aperture field that satifies the impedance boundary
field at by decomposing the field in a spectrum of plane waves condition over ground
[20]. In the spectral representation, both incoming and outgoing
plane waves along the -direction are chosen to automatically
satisfy the impedance boundary condition on the ground.
An important point to recognize is that when a wave field
modeled by a uniaxial parabolic equation encounters a vertical (21)
obstacle in range, it only affects a local change to the aperture
field. This is due to the causal nature of the forward-propagating These equations follow from extending the results for the ax-
fields along the range that prevents information about a future isymmetric case presented in [11] to a more general case with
(in range) obstacle to flow backward. Boundary conditions on transverse (i.e., -) variation. The propagator is
the building surface are then imposed on the field as the aper- due to the accumulation of phase by a plane wave traveling in the
ture plane crosses it. Due to the finite range-step size, they are, positive -direction over a distance . The quantity is
however, only applied at discrete values of the range as shown simply the plane-wave reflection coefficient over an impedance
in Fig. 2. Between two adjacent aperture planes, we assume that ground and is
the field marches as if it were propagating over flat ground. The
situation is not unlike finite-differencing of differential opera- TM mode
(22)
tors on a discrete grid. The next subsection discusses the treat- TE mode.
ment of object boundary conditions in more detail.
We assume that the frequency is high enough so that the sur- Equations (20) and (21) are used for both and with the
face wave on the ground could be neglected. In the far zone, the appropriate value of chosen from (22). As with all para-
potential at over flat ground could be written in terms bolic equation formulations, they will continue to be used near
of the potential at as [11] the source even though they have been derived for the far zone.
The error due to this assumption will be most severe for plane
waves propagating at very large angles near the source, but will
(20) decrease as the waves become shallow with respect to the axis.
It can also be shown that, under this approximation, the initial
field is [11]
where

(23)
1720
Fig. 3. Boundary treatment on an aperture plane intersecting a building.
Because the magnetic current is assumed to be zero here, the
initial condition for is simply
B. Treatment of Object Boundary Conditions
A heuristic treatment of boundary conditions that captures the
essence of the reflection and diffraction by building’s sides and
rooftops is described in the following. Fig. 2 shows the discrete
representation of buildings in our methodology. Boundary con-
ditions are enforced on a building as often as it is crossed by
the marching aperture plane. Let the intersection of an aperture
plane with the building be termed as a strip. In this discrete rep-
resentation, the space between adjacent intersections is taken to
be empty. The number of strips depends on the range step
chosen. For example, the first building in Fig. 2 gets intersected
four times. It is to be noted that buildings are not replaced with
physical strips having edges but only with mathematical strips.
Consider an intersection at , whose right-hand
corner is shown in Fig. 3 as dashed lines. Also shown in the
figure are the aperture mesh points used in the numerical compu-
tations. The potentials on an aperture plane just before it hits the
building (i.e., at , where is an arbitrarily small number)
are computed using (20) and (21). Let this field be termed as the
original field. The goal is to determine the actual field taking
into account the presence of a building at . The presence of
an obstacle will, in general, alter the aperture field not just on
the building outline, but also in a band in the exterior region con-
sisting of, say, layers around it. The first layer is the building
outline itself. On and beyond the th layer we postulate
the original field. The fields in this -layered region should be
determined from the original field propagating over a distance
along the range, the boundary condition on the obstacle, and
known fields in the layers, where . In
the following, in the interest of simplicity and speed, we adopt
the lowest order approximation obtained by using . The
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 51, NO. 8, AUGUST 2003
final justification of such an approach will be evident from the
numerical results presented later.
Because the field interior to the building is zero, we null it
at all mesh points inside the strip. These points are indicated
by open ovals in the figure. Exterior to the strip we maintain the
original field. These points are indicated by crosses in the figure.
On the boundary of the strip we assume that the potentials sat-
isfy the boundary conditions given in (12)–(15). Equation (18)
is used to express in terms of and . Hence, only
transverse derivatives are involved in the boundary condition on
the aperture field. The potentials at these boundary points (indi-
cated by solid ovals in the figure) must be determined numeri-
cally from those at the surrounding points.
In the split-step algorithm, the mesh points in the and di-
rections are dictated by the highest angle of the wave (about the
horizontal axis) that will be modeled. Large angles of propaga-
tion require a finer mesh. To include wide angles (up to about
45 ), the spacing required will be around , where is the
free-space wavelength. With such large mesh sizes, the usual
interpolating schemes, such as finite differences, tend to be in-
accurate. We will, instead, consider spectral interpolation (or
Fourier interpolation) by assuming periodicity of potentials in
a 2-D region containing the boundary points. This is reason-
able to do because the potential at a boundary point will depend
(24) mostly on its immediate neighboring points, and periodicity of
the potentials in a remote region is not expected to influence
it much. Consider first the determination of the potential at
the boundary points on a rooftop at height . Let
denote the vertically displaced axis and be the vertical
mesh size. In the following, we assume that the rooftop height
is rounded off to within so that for an integer
. We express the electric potential as an -point Fourier se-
ries [17] in the vertical direction
(25)
(26)
where the prime after the summation indicates that the
terms are multiplied by , , and
the subscript denotes known quantities. The primed summa-
tion is used in the forward series so that the highest wavenumber
is treated symmetrically during the analysis. The goal here is to
determine given , . Using the representa-
tion (25) into the boundary condition
at directly yields
(27)
JANASWAMY: PATH LOSS PREDICTIONS IN THE PRESENCE OF BUILDINGS ON FLAT TERRAIN 1721

Equation (27) and a dual version of it are used to determine and

and at every point of the aperture plane lying on
the rooftop.
To determine the potentials on the vertical sides of the
building, a 2-D Fourier representation is needed. Consider a
subregion consisting of points about the vertical
side as shown by the shaded region in Fig. 3. We assume
that the width of this region is such that it only includes one
side (viz., the right side, in this illustration) of the building. where the superscript denotes transpose
Furthermore, it must be high enough to include the rooftop
of the building. Let us redefine the origin of the coordinate
system on the aperture plane so that correspond to the
vertical side where the potentials are being determined, and (31)
let be the increment in the lateral direction. Note that the The entries of the matrices , , , , , and are
unit normal on this face can have both and components. given in the Appendix. As , the number of equa-
We use the 2-D Fourier representation in the shaded region tions in (31) is less than or equal to the number of unknowns.
, The systems of equations in (31) is then solved using pseudoin-
verse or least squares techniques. After it is solved for and
, an inverse fast Fourier transform (FFT) will yield and
(28) . Only the first values pertaining to the boundary are fi-
nally used.

C. Treatment of Aperture Truncation

The various Fourier integrals in (20) and (21) can be com-
puted efficiently by means of 2-D FFTs. This will necessarily
truncate the aperture in both the vertical and lateral directions.
Spurious reflections from the fictitious boundary can arise if
a simple rectangular truncation is employed. By carefully de-
signing smoothing windows in the spatial and wavenumber do-
mains it is possible to minimize these unwanted reflections. In
(29) the literature, these are referred to as sponge absorbers [12] and
tantamount to using a lossy material near the periphery of the
where aperture. A smooth and gradually increasing conductivity pro-
file in the lossy layer will attenuate the plane waves without
causing undue reflections. These sponge type of absorbers have
been successfully used in the PE community for well over 25
years. In this paper, we make the last quarter of space occu-
pied by the aperture gradually lossy and use a Hanning type of
and is the unknown potential. It is to be noted that sum-
window. For example, if is the aperture size in the -direc-
mation starts at in the definition of because the po- tion, the spatial window along is defined as
tential has been assumed to be zero below the ground (i.e., for
). The null potential for yields (32)

(30)
D. Propagation Factor
For reference, we will compare the field in an urban environ-
A similar equation is obtained for . Inserting (28) and ment with the field in free space. If the antenna source function
its dual into the boundary conditions (14) and (15) for at height is expressed in terms of a baseband func-
and into (12)–(15) for and evaluating tion by means of , then the
the various derivatives, we arrive at two coupled sets of linear far-zone potential in free space is
equations in the unknown vectors
(33)
where

(34)
(35)
1722 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 51, NO. 8, AUGUST 2003
and
(36)
The -component of the free-space electric field in the far zone
is
(37)
Propagation factor is defined as . In most of the
numerical results shown below we use a Gaussian source with
a linear phase taper of the form
(38)
where is the standard deviation of aperture distribution and
is the elevation angle of main beam, with being the
horizontal. The width of the main lobe in the elevation plane
can be controlled by varying . For example, to produce
an elevation beam width of 15 we choose [11].
III. NUMERICAL RESULTS
Using the theory presented in Section II, we have computed
the normalized field for several test geometries and compared
the results with those obtained by using series solution, or
uniform theory of diffraction (UTD) or with measurements.
The test geometry for series solution is a lossy or perfectly
conducting circular cylinder. The geometries considered for
UTD comparisons were an infinitely tall, perfectly conducting,
offset circular cylinder, an infinitely tall, inclined strip, a
finite-height strip, a series of finite-height strips, a finite-height
circular cylinder, and a finite-height square cylinder. The
geometries involved in the comparisons with measurements
include a centered, lossy rectangular block and an offset,
lossy rectangular building. Some of the geometries chosen are
general enough without having symmetries with respect to the
source and axis planes that they provide the same challenging
conditions that one encounters in practice.
The important parameters which will affect the numerical
accuracy the PE solution are the grid sizes , , and
along , , and directions, respectively, and the 2-D FFT size
. The increments and required on the aper-
ture plane are dictated by the maximum propagation angle being
modeled. If is the maximum propagation angle with respect
to the positive axis and if , then, we have
(39)
Equation (39) can be used to predict the maximum propagation
angle for a given mesh size. For example, if , We now consider 2–D obstacles placed asymmetrically with
then and the maximum propagation angle modeled
without aliasing is 20.7 .
Using and , it can be
shown that the range step size over flat ground satisfies
(40)
The sizes , are chosen large enough to prevent spurious
reflections off of the aperture boundaries from reaching the
useful computational domain. As an example, with , a circular cylinder of radius and center at
Fig. 4. Normalized field over flat ground versus lateral displacement showing
the angular performance of wide-angle PE.
, we get , , and
. At a frequency of 1 GHz, the maximum range
step over flat ground is about 362 m. In urban areas, will
be governed more by the building density and its representation
rather than (40). Nevertheless, (40) gives the maximum range
step one can ever use using the split-step algorithm.
We would first like to illustrate the dependence of the wide
angle capability of the algorithm on the mesh size ( , ).
Fig. 4 shows the normalized field over flat ground at a distance
of 1 km from a 15 source located at . The numerical
parameters chosen in the PE computations are shown in the
inset. The PE solution was computed out to a distance of 1 km
and the results are shown for a horizontal cut. Comparison
is shown with a two-ray model that includes a direct ray and
a ground-reflected ray. The variable on the bottom abscissa
is the lateral displacement, whereas the variable on the top
abscissa is the equivalent propagation angle as computed from
(34). As stated previously, the maximum propagation angle
treated without aliasing is 20.7 for . This is
clearly seen from the close agreement of the PE result with the
two-ray model until about . Beyond about 21 , aliasing
completely destroys the PE solution and only smaller mesh
sizewill remedy the solution. A similar observation was also
seen in the vertical cut.
respect to the source to provide rich conditions for lateral reflec-
tion and diffraction. The purpose of the following two test cases
is to bring out the effectiveness (or otherwise) of the boundary
treatment discussed in Section II-B. Both geometries will have
vertical surfaces that are not parallel to the axis planes. The first
test case we consider is that of propagation around a perfectly
conducting circular cylinder with infinite dimension along the
axis. No ground plane is assumed in this case. A line source is
located at and radiates a vertically polarized field toward
, as shown
JANASWAMY: PATH LOSS PREDICTIONS IN THE PRESENCE OF BUILDINGS ON FLAT TERRAIN
Fig. 5. Direct and reflected rays from a line source exciting a PEC circular
cylinder.
Fig. 6. 2–D propagation around a laterally displaced circular cylinder.
in Fig. 5. All fields are invariant with respect to the axis and
propagation takes place in the plane. The field is determined
at and compared with the exact series solution.
The purpose of this example is to demonstrate the effectiveness
of the boundary treatment of solid objects. Boundary conditions
on the cylinder were enforced at every 0.5 m. Other pa-
rameters are as shown in the inset of Fig. 6. At , a finite screen. A perfectly conducting screen having a height
incident shadow boundaries (ISB-1 and ISB-2) exist at 10 m
and 30 m. Beyond this region, the field is comprised of
a direct ray and a ray reflected from the circular boundary of
the cylinder. It is seen that even though the agreement with the
series solution is not perfect, the PE solution predicts the field
variation in the shadow zone and the illuminated zone very well.
The agreement at large values of can be significantly improved
by decreasing . However, there is a limit to the improvement
as a small will necessitate more marching steps and hence
1723
Fig. 7. A line source exciting an inclined conducting strip. The various shadow
boundaries are shown as dashed lines.
more frequent application of the spatial and wavenumber win-
dowing. The latter have a tendency to distort the calculations at
high angles.
The next test case we consider is an inclined conducting strip
as shown in Fig. 7. Once again, this geometry is chosen to show
the effectiveness of the boundary treatment. Note in this case
that the marching aperture plane intersects the obstacle only at
one point, and, consequently, the field is modified at that one
point only under our boundary treatment. Various incident and
reflection shadow boundaries (ISB and RSB) are indicated in
the figure. In Fig. 8, the normalized field is shown at a dis-
tance , and the various parameters used in
the computation are shown in the inset. Comparison is shown
with calculations performed by UTD. It is seen that the PE so-
lution very nicely follows the UTD solution in all of the lit and
shadow regions. Both of the preceding examples demonstrate
that reflections by solid obstacles are adequately modeled even
though the boundary conditions are applied only at discrete lo-
cations on them.
The next comparison we show is for 3-D propagation around
and width is located at as shown in Fig. 9.
The transmitting antenna is located at height at zero range
and the ground is assumed to be perfectly conducting. The field
is computed at a distance from the transmitter. We will show
propagation factor comparisons with UTD in both the horizontal
and vertical cuts. Fig. 10 shows the propagation factor (PF) as
a function of lateral displacement for a receiver height of
2.1 m. The other parameters used in the numerical computa-
tions are shown in the figure inset. Also shown in the figure is
1724
Fig. 8. Reflected and diffracted fields of a line source exciting an offset and
inclined conducting strip.
Fig. 9. A finite conducting screen between a transmitter and receiver.
the result due to a 2-D parabolic equation, run for different ra-
dials about the transmitter. The 2-D model assumes propagation
to take place in the meridian planes. If a radial line intersects
the screen, then an infinite-width screen perpendicular to the
radial line is erected at the intersecting point. In the shadow re-
gion, waves will reach the receiver only via diffraction from the
top edge. In the 3-D model, there will be diffraction from the
side and top edges of the screen. At 500 m, the incident
shadow boundary exists at 100 m. It is seen that the 3-D
PE results agrees very well with the UTD results both in the lit
and shadow regions. In contrast, the 2-D model only predicts the
average field variation and misses all of the interference lobes.
Fig. 11 shows the field variation in the vertical cut as a func-
tion of the receiver height at . Fine fluctuations, due to
the constructive and destructive interference of laterally prop-
agating waves, are seen in both the UTD and PE results. The
large spike seen in the UTD result at is believed to
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 51, NO. 8, AUGUST 2003
Fig. 10. Propagation factor versus lateral displacement around a finite screen.
Fig. 11. Propagation factor versus vertical displacement behind a finite screen.
be an aberration. (We have utilized numerical electromagnetics
code-basic scattering code (NEC-BSC) to compute the UTD re-
sults.) Once again the 3-D PE results are in good agreement with
the UTD results both in the lit and shadow regions. We have
also considered multiple screens of varying widths and a per-
fectlyconducting square cylinder and compared the PE results
with UTD results. The agreement obtained there was similar to
the ones shown in Figs. 10 and 11.
The next two examples we consider bring out the effective-
ness of the boundary treatment in calculating the cross-polar
component. The first example is that of a circular conducting
building of radius and height placed over perfect ground
at a distance of along the axis from the transmitter. The
and components of the electric field are calculated at
500 m and for a –directed Gaussian source placed at
. Fig. 12 shows the comparison of the transverse vari-
JANASWAMY: PATH LOSS PREDICTIONS IN THE PRESENCE OF BUILDINGS ON FLAT TERRAIN 1725

Fig. 12. Copolar and cross-polar components of the electric field behind a Fig. 13. Depolarization due to oblique incidence on an impedance cylinder of
perfectly conducting circular building. finite height.

ation of the fields with UTD. All fields have been normalized to
in free space. In this example, the cross-polar component re-
sults from itself and no is excited. The circular cylinder
was intersected by the marching plane times. Other pa-
rameters are shown in the figure inset. It is seen that the agree-
ment with UTD is within a few decibels both for and .
It is well known that an infinite dielectric cylinder produces
depolarization of waves when the incident wave is oblique to
the cylinder axis [22]. The next example we consider is that
of oblique scattering by a cylindrical building having a surface
impedance . A Gaussian source producing a main beam at el-
evation angle 30 and located at is used for this
purpose. The cylindrical building has its axis at , a radius
, and a height . The copolar field and the depolarized
field (resulting from the excitation of ) are calculated at
. The elevation beam width of the Gaussian source
and the building height are chosen such that there is essentially
no field incident on the building rooftop. Consequently, prop-
agation is almost entirely off of the building side walls. This
is done so that the exact series solution of a infinite cylinder
could be used for comparison. The Green’s function for a point
source and an infinite impedance cylinder was derived in terms
of cylindrical harmonics and integrated over the Gaussian aper-
ture to produce the exact field. The received fields are calculated
in the direction of the main beam at
and normalized to produced in free space. Fig. 13 shows
the comparison of the results for 50.85 m and
200 m. Other parameters are shown in the figure inset. In the
PE computations, the ground impedance is taken to be the same
as . Considering the fact that the depolarized field is about
40 dB below the copolar field, the agreement seen in the figure
is excellent over the wide range of azimuth angles considered
(0–26.6 ). The example further testifies the effectiveness of the
boundary treatment of Section II-B.
We will next a show comparison with measurement for a
lossy building-shaped obstacle. Van Dooren and Herben [21]
Fig. 14. Field strength measurement behind a lossy block-shaped obstacle,
= =
w 30 cm, d 7.7 cm, H =50 cm, x =
68.9 cm, x =
25.2 cm, H =
46 cm, H = 40 cm, and  =114.8 cm.
performed scaled model measurements and measured the field
strength along a circular arc behind a lossy, block-shaped ob-
stacle at a frequency of 50 GHz. The geometry of the measure-
ment setup is shown in Fig. 14. A vertically polarized signal was
generated using open-ended WR-90 waveguide. A comparison
of propagation factor is shown in Fig. 15 as a function of the az-
imuth angle . Measured data have been read off the plots given
in [21]. Both copolar, , and cross-polar, , components were
computed using the 3-D PE algorithm described in the previous
sections. The constitutive parameters used for the building ma-
terial and ground are indicated in the figure text. In the PE com-
putations, we had a variable such that there were
sections before the block, sections inside the block, and
sections beyond the block. For the boundary treatment
we chose . The results were rather insensitive to the
choice of over the range . It is seen that the
PE results match very closely with measurements having a mean
error of only 0.5 dB and a standard deviation of error of 4.6 dB.
Most of the contribution to the standard deviation comes from
the deep shadow region where the fields are already attenuated
30 dB. Furthermore, it is seen for this case that the cross-polar
component is about 30 dB below the copolar component.
1726
Fig. 15. Propagation factor for copolar and cross-polar components behind
lossy obstacle.
Fig. 16. Site geometry for outdoor field strength measurements.
The final comparison we show is that of propagation behind
a true building. The building we consider has vertical faces that
are not parallel to any axis plane. Haslett [6] made outdoor
measurement of field strength behind an isolated rectangular
building, whose plan view is shown in Fig. 16. The receiver
was moved horizontally through the entire shadow region, while
keeping all the other parameters fixed. A vertically polarized
transmitter was used at a frequency of 11.2 GHz. Fig. 17 shows
the normalized field as a function of the lateral displacement.
Four sections were chosen before and behind the building and
six sections were chosen within the building. For the boundary
treatment we chose , and . The results
were insensitive to the choice of these parameters over the range
, . The other parameters are as indi-
cated in the figure inset. It is seen that agreement with measure-
ment is very good and is indeed better than the agreement shown
in [6] with UTD. The mean error in prediction with PE is 0.7 dB
and the standard deviation of error is 3.7 dB. Once again, most of
the contribution to the standard deviation comes from the deep
shadow region where the PE result has deeper nulls. If only 2-D
rooftop diffractions were considered, as in the 2-D PE model
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 51, NO. 8, AUGUST 2003
Fig. 17. Normalized field behind a rectangular building.
considered in Fig. 10, the predicted normalized field strength
would be largely independent of at approximately 28 dB and
lead to highly erroneous results.
A word about the computational resources required for the
implementation of a full 3-D PE algorithm is fitting. Assuming
range steps are used, the field will be calculated within a
volume . At a frequency of 1 GHz
the wavelength is 0.3 m. Assuming that ,
, , , 5 m, the field
will be calculated in a volume 500 1228 307 m . For com-
plex arithmetic the storage requirements per aperture plane per
potential are bytes of RAM. In the above example,
we would need 134 MBytes per potential component. The CPU
time required would depend on the level of programming lan-
guage. We used MATLAB to code the entire algorithm on a
1.7-GHz Pentium IV PC. It took about 84 s per march and a
total time of 85 min for all marches with and
. Most of the time was spent in computing the four
2-D FFTs required per march in the split-step algorithm. The
overhead required in the CPU time for treating buildings was a
very small fraction of the total time even when buildings were
present during 60% of the marches.
IV. CONCLUSION
Starting from a parabolic approximation to the Helmholtz
equation, we have presented a 3-D vector parabolic equation
technique for calculating path loss in an urban environment. The
buildings were assumed to be polygonal in cross section with
vertical sides and flat rooftops and the terrain was assumed to
be flat. Both buildings and ground were allowed to be lossy and
present impedance type boundary condition to the electromag-
netic field. Vector fields were represented by using two com-
ponents of Hertzian potentials and depolarization of the fields
was automatically included in the formulation. A split-step al-
gorithm was presented for marching the aperture fields along
the range. Boundary conditions on the building surfaces were
treated by using a local Fourier representation of the aperture
fields.
JANASWAMY: PATH LOSS PREDICTIONS IN THE PRESENCE OF BUILDINGS ON FLAT TERRAIN 1727

Several test cases were considered to check the boundary

treatment used in the technique as well as to validate the
overall approach. Reflection and diffraction from offset circular
(43)
cylinder, offset strip, and finite cylinder as well as oblique
scattering from lossy cylinder were considered to demonstrate
the effectiveness of the boundary treatment. The effect of the (44)
mesh increments on the accuracy of the solution was discussed.
Favorable comparison with UTD and measurement was shown (45)
for 3-D diffraction and reflection by a finite screen, a lossy
rectangular block, and an asymmetric lossy building. The mean (46)
error relative to measurement was shown to be less than 1 dB
and the standard deviation was shown to be less than 5 dB.
Computational resources required to implement the algorithm (47)
was discussed.
The method is very suitable for multiple buildings with no (48)
great addition in the computational resources required. It is be-
lieved that path loss predictions within a 1-km layout at the (49)
cellular frequencies could be made on a PC within reasonable
times. As a byproduct of the split-step Fourier algorithm, where
the aperture fields are expressed in terms of a spectrum of plane (50)
waves, the method is also capable of predicting the angular ar-
rival of waves in the forward hemisphere. These will be ex- (51)
tremely useful in the design of smart antennas [8].
It would be highly desirable to compare the PE results to
field measurements in an environment having multiple build-
ings. We wish to initiate some measurement campaigns in the (52)
future to address this issue. More rigorous boundary treatments
than the heuristic ones considered in the paper are certainly
worth pursuing. The uniaxial technique presented in this paper (53)
ignores backscattering. The main source of the backward com- (54)
ponent that will be seen in a highly built-up area will be reflec-
tion from a building possibly behind the receiver. A first-order
contribution of the backward wave can always be handled sepa- (55)
rately starting from the aperture field determined by the present
method at a range step preceeding the receiver. A parabolic (56)
equation with respect to or a ray-based method may be used
for this purpose. The 3-D parabolic equation used in the paper (57)
is wide enough to handle waves traveling 45 with respect to the th row of the matrices , , , , and the th
the axis. The angular capability is limited by the mesh in- element of the vectors and are given by
crements chosen in the aperture plane and numerical dispersion
arising from the structure of the mesh. A simple Cartesian mesh
has been chosen in this paper. More advanced mesh structures,
such as those proposed in [5], would be certainly worthwhile. (58)
Another area of future work is the incorporation of more ad-
vanced absorbing boundary conditions at the upper boundary.
Even though well-designed spatial windows have been success- (59)
fully used to minimize reflections from the truncation of the do- (60)
main, more robust schemes will certainly be welcome.

APPENDIX
(61)
With
(62)
(63)
(41)
(42)
(64)
1728 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 51, NO. 8, AUGUST 2003
(65)
(66)
(67)
(68)
(69)
(70)
where denotes element-by-element array multiplication.
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Ramakrishna Janaswamy (S’82–M’83–SM’93–
F’03) received the Bachelor’s degree in 1981 from
REC Warangal, India, the Master’s degree in 1983
from IIT Kharagpur, India, both in electronics and
communications engineering, and the Ph.D. degree
in electrical engineering in 1986 from the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst.
From August 1986 to May 1987, he was an
Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at
Wilkes University, Wilkes Barre, PA. From August
1987 to August 2001, he was on the faculty of the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Naval Postgraduate
School, Monterey, CA. In September 2001, he joined the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
where is a Full Professor. He was a Visiting Researcher at the Center for
PersonKommunikation, Aalborg, Denmark from September 1997 to June 1998.
His research interests include deterministic and stochastic radio wave propa-
gation modeling, antenna analysis and design, and applied electromagnetics.
He is the author of the book Radiowave Propagation and Smart Antennas for
Wireless Communications (Boston, MA: Kluwer, 2000) and a contributing
author in Handbook of Antennas in Wireless Communications, L. Godara (Ed.)
(Boca Raton, FL: CRC, 2001).
Dr. Janaswamy was the recipient of the R. W. P. King Prize Paper Award of the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION in 1995 and a recipient
of the IEEE 3rd Millennium Medal from the Santa Clara Valley Section in 2000.
He also received Certificates of Recognition for Research Contributions from
ONR/ASEE in 1995 and from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA
in 1991. He is an elected member of U.S. National Committee of International
Union of Radio Science, Commissions B and F.