Path Loss Modelling Based On Path Profile in Urban
Path Loss Modelling Based On Path Profile in Urban
DOI: 10.1049/cmu2.12369
Rong-Terng Juang
1 INTRODUCTION Meanwhile, many empirical path loss models have been pro-
posed by prior researchers for 5G systems. Sun et al. presented
The emerging fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication sys- the comparison of the alpha-beta-gamma (ABG) and close-in
tems are expected to bring a complete revolution in applications (CI) path loss models using measured data and ray-tracing tech-
and experiences [1]. Mobile operators worldwide are racing to nique from 2 GHz to 73 GHz for 5G networks [5]. The authors
roll out 5G services. However, among the technical challenges, found that the physically-based CI model yielded smaller pre-
accurate channel models to predict path loss are vital for the diction errors, with a standard deviation ranging from about
design of 5G communication systems. 6 dB to 12 dB [5]. To improve the ABG model, a weighted
Among the existing path loss prediction methods, ray-tracing ABG model was proposed in [6], which suitably integrated
technique is recognized as an approach with high accuracy [2]. or combined different available datasets by considering differ-
It is a site-specific, deterministic channel model based on the ent weighting policies. It was reported that the weighted ABG
theory of geometrical optics, by which the electric field is dis- model could obtain better results in terms of model accu-
cretised into rays that are launched from the transmitter (Tx) in racy, with a standard deviation of prediction errors ranging
every direction and tracked as they propagate through the geo- from 1.2 dB to 12.5 dB [6]. To predict the millimetre-wave
metric environment [3]. With attractive accuracy, ray-tracing suf- path loss, probabilistic models were presented in [7]. Based on
fers from high computational complexity in the calculation of real-world 28 GHz and 73 GHz measurements, the authors
the shoot and bouncing rays. Therefore, hardware accelerators, obtained the line-of-sight (LOS) probabilities from ray-tracing
such as Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), Application Specific techniques and proposed a hybrid path loss model, which was
Integrated Circuit (ASIC), and Field Programmable Gate Array a weighted sum of LOS and non-LOS (NLOS) propagation
(FPGA), have been adopted in implementing ray-tracing [4]. losses [7].
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
© 2022 The Authors. IET Communications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Institution of Engineering and Technology
The aforementioned empirical models were built based 2. The advantages of the proposed machine-learning-based
on the traditional statistical approaches. Recently, machine- method, including avoiding complex feature engineering, uti-
learning-based methods have been used in path loss modelling lizing low complexity linear regression etc., are explored;
[8]. Thrane et al. proposed a path loss prediction method 3. Simulation results as well as field measurements in a 5G New
based on deep learning techniques utilizing satellite images Radio (NR) network are shown.
aided by a simple path loss model [9]. Also, a deep learn-
ing approach to model radio propagation behaviours from The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2
satellite images was proposed in [10], where the path loss expo- reviews some conventional path loss models. Section 3 presents
nent and shadowing factor for the entire coverage area were a detailed description of the proposed method. Subsequently,
estimated. Furthermore, an enhanced convolutional neural Section 4 explores the prediction performance based on numer-
network (CNN)-based path loss modelling was presented for ical simulations. Section 5 examines the performance in a real-
millimetre-wave propagations [11]. It was reported that the world 5G system in urban Taipei city. Finally, Section 6 presents
root-mean-square error of the prediction could be reduced to some concluding remarks.
8.59 dB [11]. In addition to point-to-point path loss prediction,
Ahmadien et al. proposed a method to evaluate path loss distri-
bution in the coverage area directly from satellite images based 2 CONVENTIONAL PATH LOSS
on deep learning approaches [12]. Although deep learning MODELS
approaches are indeed powerful in tasks involving prediction
or classification, they often lack transparency. The black-box 2.1 Walfisch–Ikegmi model
nature of deep learning approaches decreases the insight and
trust people have in the optimized models. Also, they often The Walfisch–Ikegami model computes the path loss by consid-
require huge amount of training data and high computational ering both LOS and NLOS conditions. The path loss in decibels
capabilities. is given by:
The Taiwan government completed its initial 5G spectrum
auction at the beginning of 2020. The spectrum on offer cov- PLWI = LFS + Lrts + Lmsd , (1)
ered 270 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band, 2,500 MHz in the 28 GHz
band, and 20 MHz in the 1.8 GHz band. Telecom operators are where LFS is the free-space path loss, Lrts is the roof-top-to-
currently rolling out 5G services. In practice, mobile operators street diffraction and scatter loss, and Lmsd is the multiscreen
tend to roll out the initial deployments in urban cities. There- diffraction loss [13, 14]. These loss terms are all functions of
fore, this paper focuses on path loss prediction in urban envi- the carrier frequency. In addition, they relate to some geomet-
ronments. ric parameters. For instance, LFS relates to the distance between
Among many path loss models, the COST231 Walfisch– the transmitter and receiver (Rx) pair; Lrts relates to the average
Ikegami model is one of the most widely used models to pre- street width, the road orientation angle, and the average build-
dict path loss in urban environments [13, 14]. It considers ing height; and Lmsd relates to the average building separation,
the obstruction of buildings in the propagation path. Specifi- the height from the average building level to the Tx antenna,
cally, the Walfisch–Ikegami model is a hybrid model combin- and a factor associated with diffraction loss. Note that the oper-
ing diffraction down to street level and some empirical correc- ation frequency for the Walfisch–Ikegami model ranges from
tion factors. Inspired by the Walfisch–Ikegami model, this paper 800 MHz to 2 GHz, although most of the 5G frequency bands
proposes a path loss model based on the profile along the direct are out of this range.
propagation path in urban environments for 5G cellular com-
munication systems. Following the machine learning method-
ology [8], this paper firstly selects some potential attributes of 2.2 ABG model
the path profile based on intuition. Then the essential features
are extracted out of the attributes using the principal compo- The ABG model is a simple extension to the alpha-beta (AB)
nent analysis (PCA) algorithm [15, 16], which is a process of model used in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
computing the principal components. The dimensions of the by adding a frequency-dependent parameter [5, 17]. It is also
original data can then be reduced by ignoring some insignificant one of the standard 3GPP models and is currently widely used
components. Subsequently, the extracted features are used to in 5G applications [6]. The ABG model can be expressed as [5]:
model the path loss using the approach of least-square regres-
sion. The proposed method has the advantage of transparency
and low computational complexity, in contrast to the deep learn- PL ABG = 10𝛼log10 r + 𝛽 + 10𝛾log10 fc , (2)
ing approaches. The main contributions of this paper are as fol-
lows. where 𝛼 is the path loss exponent associated with the Tx–Rx 3D
distance r, 𝛽 is an offset term, and 𝛾 represents the dependence
1. An improved path loss model utilizing path profile is pre- of path loss on the logarithm of the carrier frequency fc . The
sented for 5G mobile communication systems in urban optimal model parameters are typically achieved by performing
propagation environment; linear regression with measurement data [18].
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FIGURE 2 Flowchart of the proposed path loss modelling FIGURE 3 Some real-world path profiles in urban Taipei city. The
subfigures on the left-hand side are profiles with a Tx–Rx separation distance
of about 250 m, those on the right-hand side are with a distance of about
450 m, and the upper subfigures have higher path losses compared to the lower
2.3 CI model ones
where d0 is the close-in free-space reference distance, and r2 , a2,1 , a2,2 , … , a2,9 L2
LFS ( fc , d0 ) is the free-space path loss in decibels at the carrier ⋮ ⋮
frequency fc and at a Tx–Rx separation distance of d0 . The opti- rM , aM ,1 , aM ,2 , … , aM ,9 LM
mal model parameters are typically estimated by performing lin-
ear regression with measurement data [18].
features are used to model the path loss using the approach of
3 PROPOSED PATH LOSS MODEL least-square regression. A detailed description of the proposed
method is given below.
In urban environments, the direct connection line between
the Tx and Rx is very likely to be blocked by buildings.
Unlike the ray-tracing model which performs the shooting 3.1 Calculation of profile attributes
and bouncing of rays at the cost of high computation com-
plexity, the proposed method predicts the path loss based Some real-world path profiles in urban Taipei city are shown in
on the geometric information along the direct path between Figure 3, where those on the left-hand side are profiles with a
the Tx–Rx pair. Figure 1 shows the conceptual overview of Tx–Rx separation distance of about 250 m, those on the right-
the Tx–Rx pair and the path profile along the direct con- hand side are with a distance of about 450 m, and the upper
nection line, where hTx is the Tx height, d is the horizontal subfigures have higher path loss values compared to the lower
1∕2
distance, and r = [d 2 + (hTx − 1.5)2 ] is the 3D distance ones. Specifically, based on the ray-tracing model, the path loss
between the Tx–Rx pair. The obstruction of buildings results values for the upper subfigures are 149 dB and 155 dB, respec-
in excessive path loss, in addition to free-space loss. There- tively, and those for the lower ones are 89 dB and 127 dB,
fore, this paper incorporates the profile features in path loss respectively. This figure reveals that different path profiles lead
modelling. to different path losses. Thus, based on visual inspection of the
Based on the machine learning methodology [8, 19], Figure 2 path profiles, this paper subjectively selects nine attributes as
shows the flowchart of the proposed path loss modelling. It follows.
starts by collecting the records of path loss and the associ-
ated path profiles. Then the attributes of the profiles are cal- 1. Average building height: the obstruction of buildings results
culated. Subsequently, the essential features are extracted out in propagation loss; therefore, this attribute is the arithmetic
of the attributes using the PCA algorithm. Lastly, the dominant mean of building heights along the profile.
688 JUANG
2. Standard deviation of building height: this attribute refers to Since there are M records in the training dataset, the attributes
the standard deviation of building heights along the profile. can be expressed in a matrix form as:
3. Normalized mean value of building distance: analogously to
the two aforementioned attributes which take the statistics ⎡ ã 1 ⎤
in the vertical axis, this attribute and the subsequent one take ⎢ ⎥
the statistics in the horizontal axis. This attribute is the arith- ⎢ ã 2 ⎥
A = ⎢ ⎥. (6)
metic mean of the distances from the Tx to the buildings ⎢⋮⎥
along the profile. The mean value is normalized by the Tx– ⎢ ⎥
Rx separation distance. ⎣ã M ⎦
4. Normalized standard deviation of building distance: this
attribute refers to the standard deviation of the distances The PCA algorithm computes the eigenvectors and the
from the Tx to the buildings along the profile. The standard corresponding eigenvalues of the covariance matrix of
deviation is normalized by the Tx–Rx separation distance. A. Denote the resulting eigenvalues in descending order
5. Building density: in addition to the above two statistics in as {𝜆1 , 𝜆2 , … , 𝜆N }and the corresponding eigenvectors as
the horizontal axis, this attribute describes the percentage of {v1 , v2 , … , vN }. Then the PCA algorithm selects the top 𝜏 prin-
building along the profile. cipal eigenvalues (𝜏 < N ) such that the ratio
6. Average building width: this attribute refers to the arithmetic
𝜆1 + 𝜆2 + ⋯ + 𝜆𝜏
mean of the building width along the profile. 𝜌= , (7)
7. Average street width: this attribute is the arithmetic mean of 𝜆1 + 𝜆2 + ⋯ + 𝜆𝜏 + 𝜆𝜏+1 ⋯ + 𝜆N
the street width along the profile.
8. Distance to the nearest building from the Rx: in general, the is higher than a threshold to keep sufficient relevant informa-
path loss tends to be high when a high building is close to tion. According to [20], the ratio should be greater than 0.9
the Rx. This attribute refers to the distance from the Rx to to retain most of the information in the dataset. Finally, the
the nearest building along the profile. original attributes are projected to the 𝜏-dimensional feature
space constructed by the selected eigenvectors. For instance,
9. Height of the nearest building from the Rx: this attribute is ∑3 ∑N
the height of the nearest building along the profile from the assume 𝜏 is selected as three because 𝜌 = ( i=1 𝜆i )∕( i=1 𝜆i )
Rx. is greater than 0.9, then the dimension of the original data can
be reduced from N to three by projecting the data to a 3-D
Given the definitions above, the profile attributions can be feature space constructed by v1 , v2 , and v3 . Specifically, the 𝜏
calculated accordingly. Denote (ai,1 , ai,2 , … , ai,9 ) as the nine features, (𝜒i,1 , 𝜒i,2 , … , 𝜒i,𝜏 ), extracted from the path profile of
selected attributes for the ith Tx–Rx pair, and ri and Li as the the ith Tx–Rx pair can be expressed as:
associated distance and path loss, respectively. Table 1 shows
the structure of the training dataset, with a size of M records. fi = ã i V, 1 ≤ i ≤ M , (8)
The objective of the machine learning here is to find the rela-
tionship between the input data and the target path loss in the where fi = [ 𝜒i,1 𝜒i,2 ⋯ 𝜒i,𝜏 ] and V = [v1 v2 ⋯ v𝜏 ] .
table. The distance ri is a well-known path loss feature, while
the feature extraction of the attributes is described in the subse-
quent section. 3.3 Regression of path loss model
The features extracted above are used to model the path loss.
The proposed model combines LOS and NLOS propagation
3.2 Extraction of essential features scenarios. For LOS cases, where the radiation from the Tx is not
blocked by buildings, the path loss is determined using the ABG
Without complex feature engineering, there is no guarantee that
model. For single frequency scenarios, 𝛾 in (2) is set to two, thus
all the aforementioned attributes are mutually independent and
the ABG model reverts to the AB model used in 3GPP and
highly correlated to path loss. Therefore, this paper uses the
WINNER II channel models [5, 21] and has the form:
PCA algorithm to extract essential features out of the attributes.
In general, the selected attributes for the ith Tx–Rx pair can be
PL AB = 10𝛼log10 r + 𝛽. (9)
expressed in a vector form as:
[ ] This paper assumes the excessive path loss in addition to the
ai = ai,1 ai,2 ⋯ ai,N , (4)
free-space propagation is caused by the obstruction of build-
ings. Therefore, the path loss model for NLOS cases considers
where N is the number of selected attributes. The logarithm of
the Tx–Rx separation distance and the extracted features in (8).
ai can be expressed as:
Since plain linear models usually suffer from under-fitting prob-
[ ] lems, this paper increases the model capability by adding powers
ã i = 10log10 ai,1 10log10 ai,2 ⋯ 10log10 ai,N . (5) of the original features as new features. As a result, the proposed
JUANG 689
path loss model for NLOS cases is a high order equation and
can be expressed as:
𝜏𝜅
∑
K ∑
𝜃𝜅, j f j𝜅 ,
K
PL ABS = 10𝛼log10 r + 𝛽 + (10)
𝜅=1 j =1
L̂ i = ̃f i 𝜽 OPT (18)
L = F𝜽, (13)
FIGURE 5 Information ratios of the principal components. The FIGURE 6 Prediction performance of the proposed path loss model and
cumulated information ratio of the top four components reaches 95% the conventional models in simulations
TABLE 2 Simulation results of path loss prediction error for the TABLE 3 Simulation results of path loss prediction error for the
macro-cell base station operating in the 3.5 GHz band at 30 m height micro-cell base station operating in the 3.5 GHz band at 30 m height
ORCID
Rong-Terng Juang https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9965-2396
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https://doi.org/10.1049/cmu2.12369
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