A tool for raytracing based radio channel simulation

Abstract

In this paper, we briefly report on our ongoing work to extend the GNU Radio software suite with a ray tracing based radio channel simulator. Radio channel simulation is an important aspect in the design and evaluation of wireless protocols because noise and interference can have a crucial impact on the performance of a protocol. However, the calculation of radio wave propagation is computationally demanding. Thus, most network simulation frameworks rely on simple statistical radio channel models that do not account for site-specific propagation characteristics. So, these simulators miss important details that might impact a protocol significantly in specific propagation environment. Our radio channel simulator uses ray tracing techniques to overcome this limitation. It precomputes the channel characteristics of a given scene so that it can then efficiently simulate the corresponding links. Our implementation seamlessly interfaces with the GNU Radio software defined radio (SDR) framework, replacing its statistical channel simulation component. Furthermore, using GNU Radio's various modulation components, our simulator can provide a complete PHY layer simulation interface for other simulators such as ns-3 or OMNeT++. All in all, our simulator enables SDR developers and wireless protocol engineers to quickly assess their design in more realistic simulated environments.