A body-shadowing model for indoor radio communication environments

Deterministic propagation prediction methods proposed for indoor radio are useful for estimating the average propagation loss in real environments, which usually have complicated geometries. On the other hand, these methods generally fail to accommodate human body shadowing, which is a significant propagation effect in indoor picocells. Several empirical models to describe body shadowing have been reported. However, to our knowledge, no appropriate model that can be used in combination with deterministic propagation prediction methods has been provided in the literature. In this paper, a new practical model is introduced, which provides a way to estimate body-shadowing effects deterministically with the existing ray-determination methods. The detailed procedure to combine our body-shadowing model with the ray-determination methods is described. Several examples are shown applying the procedure to a simple office layout.