Ray tracing propagation modeling for future small-cell and indoor applications: a review of current techniques

Applied for the first time to mobile radio propagation modeling at the beginning of the nineties, ray tracing is now living a second youth. It is probably the best model to assist in the design and planning of future short range, mm-wave wireless systems, where the more limited propagation environment with respect to UHF frequencies, allows to overcome traditional high-CPU time limitations while the higher operating frequency makes ray-optics approximations less drastic and allows to achieve an unprecedented level of accuracy. An overview of ray tracing propagation modeling is given in this paper, with a special attention to future prospects and applications. In particular, frontiers of ray-based propagation modeling such as extension to diffuse scattering, multidimensional channel characterization, MIMO capacity assessments and future applications such as real-time ray tracing are addressed in the paper with reference to the work recently carried out at the University of Bologna.