Predicting leaf state effects on radiowaves based on propagation loss measurements

Abstract

A new propagation model is proposed for estimating the attenuation of wireless communication signals in woodland environments. After rainfall or snowfall, the components of the woodland area become moist which degrades the received signal level. To take this into account, the model considers wet/dry states of the foliage, and its dependency on the operating frequency. The parameters of the propagation loss model are optimized using the least squares method. To demonstrate the validity and usefulness of the model, computed results are compared with measured data where excellent matching is observed. It is noted that not only the foliage and rainfall affect the propagation phenomenon, but also wet foliage condition after rainfall contributes to the fading of the wave.