VHF General Urban Path Loss Model for Short Range Ground-to-Ground Communications

Abstract

From a radio frequency propagation perspective, the general focus of the commercial wireless communications community has been primarily on frequencies above 800 MHz. Therefore, there is a limited number of available empirical data and validated prediction methods indicating what type of path loss or signal degradation one should expect in various urban settings at a very high frequency (VHF) range, which is the range of operation for numerous military tactical communications systems. Furthermore, the extensive literature survey revealed that indoor propagation models are particularly lacking in either availability and/or proven fidelity. This paper presents a new general urban path loss model derived from a log-distance path loss model, floor attenuation factor model and path loss measurements taken on campus of The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/ APL), Laurel, MD, with a measurement hardware suite in 30-88 MHz frequency range. The authors felt that there is a void in the open literature on simple, empirically-verified large-scale path loss models that implicitly address the lower VHF range, more than one urban setting, short communications ranges ( 1 km) and low transmitting and receiving antenna heights as well as offer reasonably high fidelity without requiring a lot of information about the site.Index Terms-Ground-to-ground communications, indoor propagation, land mobile, land mobile to land mobile communications, low antenna height, military tactical communications, military operations on urban terrain (MOUT), path loss, peer to peer communications, radio frequency (RF) propagation prediction, short range communications, single channel ground and airborne radio system (SINCGARS), squad radio, urban canyon, very high frequency (VHF) , wireless communications.

Short-Range Low-VHF Channel Characterization in Cluttered Environments

“…Similar path-loss models in the lower VHF range have also been proposed [2], [14], [15]. In the literature, little attention has been paid to shorter range lower VHF band channel characterization for near-ground nodes deployed in complex propagation scenarios, especially for indoor-to-indoor and outdoor-to-indoor communications.…”

“…In challenging environments such as urban canyons and indoor settings, achieving a reliable communications link minimally impeded by scatterers is extremely challenging. In recent years, rapid global urbanization and the ever increasing need for reliable communications in emergency and tactical applications [1], [2] has necessitated reliable communications paradigms for such environments to support humans and autonomous agents, enabling communications, sensing, real-time positioning, and tracking [3], [4].…”

White broadband power line communication: Exploiting the TVWS for indoor multimedia smart grid applications

“…According to Andrusenko et al, 27 the path loss of the TVWS is dependent on several factors such as number of walls, number of floors between the transmitter (Tx) and the Rx, in addition to the frequency and separation distance. However, the VHF channel characteristics are better than the UHF in terms of path loss and penetration through the concrete walls.…”

“…The output of the STBC is then split into 2 paths: (1) Wireless TVWS, and (2) BPLC, where each path adopts OFDM to allocate specific frequency channels to each user. Both shadowing and path loss effects are modeled using the VHF indoor path loss model in Andrusenko et al 27 The indoor power line channel is also represented using the random topology generator proposed in Heggo et al, 34 where different parameters are randomly generated and integrated to build up the power line topology, which determines the power line channel gain. The combined symbols are passed through a maximum likelihood detector to allow estimation of the transmitted symbols.…”

Study of path loss for ground based communication in military UHF band

“…In addition, the application of urban warfare such as communications between soldiers and unmanned sensor network [3] are ground based communication with limited antenna height. In the literature, few works [3]- [4] have been reported for the application of urban warfare in military UHF band and VHF band.…”