Determination of Building Penetration Loss of Gsm Signals, Using Selected Buildings in Orhuwhorun, Delta State, Nigeria as a Case Study

Abstract

Outages of GSM signals may be experienced at some indoor locations even where there are strong outdoor receptions. This is often traced to the building penetration loss, which accounts for increased attenuation of received GSM signal level when a mobile signal device is moved indoor from outdoor. The signal degradation increases with increasing penetration loss. Penetration loss depends on the building material type, amongst others and adds to the overall path loss of a link. In this work, measurements of two existing GSM Operators’ signals level were made outside and inside two selected buildings- concrete and block, which represent the prevalent building types in Orhuwhorun, Delta State, Nigeria. A Samsung Galaxy GT-35000 mobile phone with RF signal tracker software installed in it was used and the results shows an average loss of 10.62dBm, and 4.25dBm for the concrete and block buildings, respectively. This results will help service network providers in future site-specific planning.