Unified approach to prediction of propagation over buildings for all ranges of base station antenna height

This paper presents theoretical results for the dependence on base station antenna height of the average received signal for mobiles at street level are presented. The results apply to residential and commercial sections of cities and to all ranges of antenna height from well above to below that of the surrounding buildings. Assuming all buildings to be of equal heights, the range dependence of the average signal is found by evaluating multiple forward diffraction past rows of buildings. The solution for this diffraction problem for sources near to or below the rooftops gives the dependence of the range index on antenna height and base station height gain, which are in agreement with measurements. These results will be of importance for proposed systems for personal communication services, which envision the use of base station antennas at the height of lamp posts, as well as cellular mobile radio (CMR).