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Indoor Multi-wall Path Loss Model at 1.93 GHz

CONFERENCE PAPER NOVEMBER 2013
DOI: 10.1109/MILCOM.2013.211

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Yazan Ibdah

Sami Muhaidat

Wichita State University

Khalifa University & The University of Wester

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2013 IEEE Military Communications Conference

Indoor Multi-Wall Path Loss Model at 1.93 GHz

Lun Li, Yazan Ibdah, Yanwu Ding

Homa Eghbali

Wichita State University

Simon Fraser University

Sami Hakam Muhaidat

Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research

Xiurong Ma
Tianjin Technology University

model, especially in situations where good quality of images

for the oor plans are not available.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section II describes the in building measurements conducted,
Section III introduces some well-known empirical indoor path
loss models. Section IV presents the developed multi-wall
model. Simulation results and numerical analysis are found
in V. Section VI concludes the paper.

AbstractThis paper studies a multi-wall path loss propagation model for an indoor environment at 1.93 GHz of transmission
frequency. The effects of locations, materials, and thickness of
the walls are considered in the model. The loss factors are
optimized and veried by the measurements. To implement the
proposed model, image processing techniques are applied to the
architectural oor plan in order to obtain the locations and
thickness of the walls. Compared with the actual measurements,
the proposed model provides higher accuracy in prediction of the
path loss than some of the existing well-known empirical indoor
channel models. To test the robustness of proposed model to the
noise in the images of oor plans, four types of noise are added to
the images when obtaining the locations and thickness of walls.
Simulation results indicate that the performance of proposed
model, unlike that of an existing model, is not degraded by the
noise added to the image of oor plan.
Index TermsMulti-wall model, path loss, robustness.

II. M EASUREMENT FOR INDOOR BUILDINGS

To characterize the indoor path loss propagation model, a
set of measurements are conducted in the 6th, 9th, and 31st
oors of One Madison Park in New York. Concrete walls
are found inside the building, dry walls are made for further
separations rooms, and glass walls form the edge of the oors.
A couple of elevators are built in the middle of the oors.
A Consultix WTX test transmitter is equipped with a 2dBi
1.9GHz omni directional antenna. The BVS dual modular
receiver is equipped with a 0 dBi gain antenna to deploy
the network for the test. The test equipments are congured
to measure the received power in dBm. Figs. 1 and 2 show,
respectively, the architectural oor plans and testing routes for
the 6th and 31st oors. Along the testing routs, the strength of
the received power is indicated by different shade of colors.
The darker the color, the lower the received power.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Increased applications of indoor wireless communications
have inspired interest in the study of indoor radio propagations.
A suitable channel prediction model becomes important to
assist the system designer in optimizing the transmission
systems. In the past decades, various empirical channel path
loss models at various transmission frequencies have been
developed for indoor environments, e.g. [1][4]. Although
some of these models can be used to predict the path loss for
a wide range of frequency bands, the prediction errors might
be large in certain frequencies. This paper analyzes the indoor
path loss at 1.93 GHz radio frequency and develops a multiwall path loss propagation model. The effects of location,
material, and thickness of the walls are considered in the
model. Image processing techniques are applied to the oor
plan to detect the locations and thickness of walls through
which the radio signals penetrate. When compared with the
actual measurements, the proposed model provides higher
accuracy in predicting the path loss than some well-known
empirical indoor path loss models. Since the information of
wall locations and thickness is obtained from the images of
oor plans, it is interesting to test how the proposed model is
affected by the noise in the image les. We added four types
of noise: Gaussian, Poisson, salt and pepper, and speckle to
the images of oor plans. Simulation results indicate that the
performance of the proposed model, unlike that of an existing
model, is not degraded by the noise added. This robustness
certainly provides an advantage to the application of proposed
978-0-7695-5124-1/13 $31.00 2013 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/MILCOM.2013.211

Fig. 1.

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Architectural plan and testing routs for 6th oor

D. COST231 Multi-Wall Model

The COST231 multi-wall model is discussed [9].
COST = 0 + 10COST log() +

(4)

=1

where is the total number of the walls through which the

radio signal propagates; denote the wall loss factor for the
th wall. Three types of walls are considered in the model: light
wall, heavy wall, and metal wall (antenna chamber walls). The
optimized empirical wall loss factors at 1.9 GHz are listed in
Table I and the path loss exponent COST is 2 for 1.9 GHz [5].

Fig. 2.

TABLE I
WALL LOSS FACTORS FOR C OST 231 M ODEL AT 1.9 GH Z

Architectural plan and testing routs for 31st oor

Light Wall
2.1 dB

III. E XISTING I NDOOR PATH L OSS M ODELS

Several path loss models have been developed for indoor
multi-wall environments. In this section we introduce four
popular models, namely, one-slope model, partitioned model,
ITU model, and COST231 multi-wall model.

IV. P ROPOSED M ULTI - WALL I NDOOR M ODEL

(1)

where the subscript os represents one-slope, os is the path

loss in dB at distance which measures the separation between
the distance between the transmitter and the receiver; 0 is
the reference path loss obtained from the measurements at the
reference distance 0 , which is chosen as 1 meter (m); and
os is the path loss exponent that indicates how fast the path
loss increases with distance. The empirical value for os at 1.9
GHz is obtained as 3.5 [5].

= 0 + 10 log10 () + + + +

1m < 10m
10m< 20m
20m< 40m
> 40m

(5)

where and are the loss factors for dry walls and elevators,
respectively; denotes the total number of concrete walls
through which the signal propagates; denotes the loss due
to the th concrete wall and has different values depending on
the thickness of the wall; and denotes the signal reection
factor from glass walls, it has a negative value implying that
the path loss is somewhat compensated by the nearby glass
walls.
Based on the measurement collected at 1.93 GHz, the path
loss exponent is empirically chosen as 2.52, the values of
, , and are listed in Table II. Denoting the thickness

(2)

TABLE II
WALL LOSS FACTORS IN PROPOSED MODEL

C. ITU Model
The ITU indoor propagation model [8], also known as the
ITU model for indoor attenuation, is a radio propagation model
that estimates the path loss inside a room or a closed area in
a building delimited by walls of any form. The path loss in
dB is given by
ITU = 20 log10 ( ) + ITU log10 () 28

=1

B. Partitioned Model
The partitioned model is formulated by four different predened signal loss prediction values based on different distance ranges. The path loss in dB is given by [6], [7]
pa =

20 log10 ,

20+30 log10 ( 10
),
0 +

29+60
log
(

10 20 ),

47+120 log10 ( 40
),

Metal Wall
1.3 dB

The primary cause of the propagation attenuation is the

distance between the transmitter and the receiver. However,
indoor path loss is also affected by additional factors related
to the oor layouts and architectural structures, including the
material and thickness of the walls through which the radio
signal propagates. The multi-wall model presented in this
paper takes into account these factors. The signal reection
parameter by glass walls is included as well. The proposed
model is given by:

A. One-slope Model
The one-slope model is an universal radio propagation
model which has the following form [5]
os = 0 + 10os log10 ()

Heavy Wall
4.4 dB

2.5 dB

6.8 dB

-1.3 dB

of the th concrete wall, the values of for a different range

of concrete wall thicknesses are given by

for < 68 cm
7.8 dB,
9 dB,
for 68 cm < < 133 cm
(6)
=

11 dB,
for < 133 cm

(3)

where is the frequency of transmission, and empirical path

loss exponent ITU is equal to 30 at 1.9 GHz.

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120

V. S IMULATION
To verify the proposed model, we present performance
comparison with the four existing models presented in Section III. The proposed model requires the locations and thickness of walls in the bulding. To obtain the information, we rst
apply image processing techniques to detect wall boundaries
based on the RGB values in the images of oor plans. Then we
distinguish the walls by the materials of which they are made.
Finally, the thickness of the walls is calculated by measuring
between the edges of the walls. The locations of elevators are
manually detected since their locations are the same for all
oors in a building.
For the COST231 multi-wall model, the locations of the
walls detected from the image of oor plan are used. There
are no metal walls involved with the measurements in both
oors. Concrete and dry walls are treated as heavy and light
walls, respectively, when implementing COST231 model.

110

100

Measurement
Proposed MultiWall Model
Cost MultiWall Model
ITU Model
Partitioned Model
OneSlope Model

Path Loss (dB)

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

10

10
Distance (meter)

A. Simulation using clean image of oor plan

Fig. 3.

In this subsection, the information of wall locations and

thickness are obtained from the original image les of oor
plans provided by the building manufacturer. It is believed
those images contained the least noise. Figs. 3 and 4 show
the path loss predicted by the proposed model and the four
existing models, for the 6th and 31st oors respectively.
The measurements are indicated by light yellow dots in the
gures. The proposed model is indicated by green s, the
COST231 multi-wall model by red squares, the one-slope
model by purple dash-dotted line, the partitioned model by
blue solid line, and the ITU model by black dashed line.
It can be seen that the proposed and COST231 multi-wall
models characterize the path loss better than the one-slope,
partitioned, and ITU models. Compared with all these existing
models, the propose model represents the largest portion of the
measurement data.
Figs. 5 and 6, plot the error distributions of the proposed
and COST231 multi-wall models for the 6th and 31st oors.
The errors are calculated by the absolute values between the
measurement and path loss predicted by the models in dB. A
set of bars are used to present the percentage of these errors
that are in the ranges (0, 5), (5, 10), (10, 15), , respectively.
It can be seen that, based on the measurements for both oors,
the proposed model outperforms COST231 multi-wall model,
and has higher percentages for lower errors than its counter
part.

Path loss for 6th oor

110

100

Measurement
Proposed MultiWall Model
Cost MultiWall Model
ITU Model
Partitioned Model
OneSlope Model

Path Loss (dB)

90

80

70

60

50

40
0
10

10
Distance (meter)

Fig. 4.

Path loss for 31st oor

noise are considered: Gaussian, Poisson, salt and pepper, and

speckle noise. Fig. 7 plots the image of the 6th oor plan
with Gaussian noise. Compared with the original oor plan in
Fig. 1, the corrupted image is blurred by the noise.
Figs. 8 and 9 plot the error distributions for proposed and
COST231 models using oor plans corrupted with various
types of noise. For comparison, the error distributions using
the clean oor plans are also plotted. The results by the
proposed model are indicated by a group of bluish colored
bars, and those by COST231 by a group of reddish bars.
The gures suggest that the proposed model outperforms its
counter part in all cases of the noisy oor plans for both
oors. Furthermore, the performance of proposed model is

B. Simulation using noisy image of oor plan

The wall locations and thickness used in Figs. 3 to 6 are
obtained based on the image les of oor plans provided by
the manufacturer of the building. It is believed those images
are clean as they contain the least amount of noise. To test
how the proposed model performs if the images of the oor
plans are corrupted by noise, we articially add noise to the
image les and detect the wall locations and thickness. The
detected information is then used for calculating the path loss
in the proposed model and COST231 model. Four types of

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0.45
Proposed: No noise in floor plan
COST231: No noise in floor plan
0.4

0.35

percentage

0.3

0.25

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

10
15
20
|mesurement predicted by model| in dB

25

Fig. 5. Error distributions of the proposed and COST231 models for 6th
oor, image of oor plan with no noise

Fig. 7.

Image of the 6th oor plan with Gaussian noise

0.5
Proposed with Gaussian noise
COST with Gaussian noise

0.45
Proposed: No noise
Proposed: Gaussian noise
Proposed: Poisson noise
Proposed: SP noise
Proposed: Speckle noise
COST231: No noise
COST231: Gaussian noise
COST231: Poisson noise
COST231: SP noise
COST231: Speckle noise

0.45
0.4
0.4
0.35
0.35
0.3

percentage

percentage

0.3

0.25

0.2

0.15

0.25

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.1

0.05
0.05
0

10
15
20
|mesurement predicted by model| in dB

25

Fig. 6. Error distributions of the proposed and COST231 models for 31st
oor, image of oor plan with no noise

10
15
20
|mesurement predicted by model| in dB

25

Fig. 8. Error distributions of the proposed and COST231 models for 31st
oor, image of oor plan with various noise

not degraded by the noisy images of the oor plans. In

this perspective, the proposed model is more robust than the
COST231 multi-wall model.

VII. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the ATEC Wireless for
providing us the indoor measurement results.

VI. C ONCLUSIONS
R EFERENCES

This paper investigates the indoor path loss radio propagation channel modeling for an indoor environment at 1.93 GHz
of transmission frequency. A multi-wall model is developed,
taking into account the number, material, and thickness of the
walls. To implement the model, image processing techniques
are applied to the oor plans to obtain information on the walls
and obstacles through which the signals propagate. Simulation
results suggest that the proposed model provides a superior
performance over some well-known indoor path loss models.
In addition, the proposed model is robust to the noise in the
images of oor plans, which provides a potential advantage
for the proposed model in the indoor path loss prediction even
when a clean image of oor plan is not available.

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0.5
Proposed: No noise
Proposed: Gaussian noise
Proposed: Poisson noise
Proposed: SP noise
Proposed: Speckle noise
COST231: No noise
COST231: Gaussian noise
COST231: Poisson noise
COST231: SP noise
COST231: Speckle noise

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0.35

percentage

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|mesurement predicted by model| in dB

25

Fig. 9. Error distributions of the proposed and COST231 models for 31st
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