IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 45, NO.

7, JULY 1997

1093

UTD Multiple-Edge Transition Zone Diffraction

J. Bach Andersen, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract The uniform theory of diffraction (UTD) is applied to multiple absorbing screens, which are in the transition zones near shadow boundaries. The theory includes the application of slope diffraction, which is a rst-order effect in transition zone diffraction. By choosing length parameters independently for amplitude and slope diffraction, it is ensured that the solution has continuity of amplitude and slope at each point. The solution is compared with known solutions with good results except when two screens are very near each other. Index Terms Geometrical theory of diffraction.

I. INTRODUCTION

AVE propagation related to mobile communication systems often occurs via diffractions around multiple obstacles, which may be over different hills in the rural case, over buildings in microcells, or around corners in the indoor environment. Until now, these problems have been solved by strictly numerical means, be it integral equations or difference equations, fast Fourier transform (FFT) techniques, or numerical integration of the physical optics solution, which involves multiple integration of Fresnel-like integrals [1], [2]. An attractive solution exists for many screens [3], but the spacings must be constant. In this paper, a strict ray-tracing tool is developed that allows an approximate yet accurate and fast determination of elds diffracted around a multiplicity of obstacles by simply following the known principles of the uniform theory of diffraction (UTD). The main problem with straightforward application of UTD is that in many cases, one edge is in the transition zones from the previous edges. Strictly speaking, this forbids application of ray techniques, but in the spirit of UTD, the principle of local illumination of an edge should still be valid so at least within some approximate degree a solution can still be obtained. As will be shown in the following, the solution is quite accurate in most cases of practical interest. In the past, special solutions have been obtained in special cases. Herman and Volakis [4], [5] applied the extended spectral-ray method to double wedges and polygons, including higher order diffracted elds. Their results are highly accurate but not immediately applicable to the present case, although a similar theory could be developed for multiple edges. In the case of only two wedges, results have been found by using special transition functions [6], [7], but in general, it has been the viewpoint that UTD is not applicable in transition zone diffraction [8]. The key point in the present heuristic theory is to include slope diffraction, which is usually neglected as a higher order term in an asymptotic expansion; however, in transition zone diffraction, the term is of the same

Fig. 1. Combined diffraction coefcient for the case of two screens as a s2 for s0 s1 s2 . The curve Lee is the exact function of s0 solution [12]. For s0 tending to 0.5, the two screens collapse into one in which situation the UTD solution diverges.

+ +

=1

order as the ordinary amplitude diffraction terms [9]. In [9], the values (see below) in the UTD were chosen to be the classical values with the consequence that the slopes were not precisely continuous. A key element in the present method is automatic enforcement of continuity of amplitude and slope at each point by choosing separate values for the distance parameters for amplitude and for slope diffraction. Holm [10] has found higher order UTD diffracted elds and it is possible that by incorporating these higher order derivatives results, they might be obtained for higher order than the slope. In the following, only absorbing screens will be treated, but extension to the general case of reecting wedges is not difcult since all the formulas are available in the literature [11]. II. SLOPE DIFFRACTION Slope diffraction is an important supplement to ordinary amplitude diffraction; and, as will be seen in the following, it is of primary importance for diffraction in the transition zones. The basic UTD theory gives the following equation for the total diffracted eld for a simple absorbing half-plane: (1) where (2)

Manuscript received January 22, 1996; revised January 8, 1997. The author is with the Center for Personkommunikation, Aalborg University, Aalborg, 9220 Denmark. Publisher Item Identier S 0018-926X(97)04889-8.

0018926X/97$10.00 1997 IEEE

1094

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 45, NO. 7, JULY 1997

With the assumptions above the total incident eld on the second edge is (8) where the sufx 1 refers to the rst edge. is the incident wave from the source evaluated at edge 1. is the incident eld at edge 2 without the rst screen present if line-of-sight. is given by (2), and must be found from continuity of eld across the shadow line. Along the shadow line simplies to (9)
Fig. 2. A scenario of three screens distinguishing between amplitude diffraction and slope diffraction. Two different ray tracings must be performedthe upper one with screen 1 absent leading to a slope wave after the third screen and the lower one via screen 1 with slope diffraction after the second screen.

To have continuity, the discontinuity of the diffracted eld should cancel the discontinuity of the incident eld, i.e., the diffracted eld should be one half of the incident eld for all values of , the distance from the edge

is a distance factor to be determined later, is the angle above the shadow boundary and is the so-called spreading factor (10) (3) from which the value of The slope diffraction coefcient is intimately connected with the diffraction coefcient so (4) The transition function is, as usual, given by (12) (5) Since we need derivatives of without derivation: in the following, we state a trivial result; the rst edge halves the incident eld. In (8) and (12), the phase terms have been suppressed since they are trivial. The phase progresses uniformly with distance. To nd the slope wave it is necessary to nd the slope of the incident eld as a function of distance from the rst edge is given by may be found as (11)

(6) The slope diffraction coefcient may now be determined from (4). Straightforward application of the formulas above gives

(13) (7) III. DIFFRACTION OVER TWO SCREENS The method will now be applied to two screens and later by recursion to several screens. For simplicity, the antennas and the edges will all have the same height in this section, but it is clear that this is not a fundamental assumption and it will be removed later. It is also assumed that the slope of the incident eld is zero. The incident wave on the second edge consists now of two components, an amplitude wave and a slope wave, where the amplitude wave is the combined incident and amplitude diffracted wave, if we consider a position just above the shadow boundary. (It is really not important if a position above or below the boundary is chosen, since continuity has been established.) . The value The value at the edge is found by setting of , the for the slope wave is found by enforcing the in the slope wave after the second edge to have such a value that it exactly balances the discontinuity of the slope of the wave, i.e.,

(14)

BACH ANDERSEN: UTD MULTIPLE-EDGE TRANSITION ZONE DIFFRACTION

1095

Fig. 4. A scenario of six absorbing edges of unequal heights. The edge points over a line joining the two are lying on a parabola of maximum height antennas. The frequency is 900 MHz and the distance between antennas is 200 m.

Fig. 3. Diffraction over screens of equal heights and equal spacings. The solution is independent of frequency. The points are the UTD solution and the full curve is the exact solution [12].

which leads to (15) It is now a simple matter to nd the eld after edge 2

(16) where (17) Two things are worth noting. The frequency dependence disappears, since the slope of the incident eld increases with frequency at the same rate that the slope coefcient decreases. The other is that the slope wave adds in phase with the amplitude diffracted wave. By normalizing the eld with the free-space eld the result can be expressed as a combined diffraction coefcient as (18) This expression in all its simplicity is remarkably accurate. For all distances equal the result is 0.3335 where the exact result is 1/3 [12]. It is, however, inaccurate when is very small relative to the other distances. A comparison with an exact and situation is given in Fig. 1 for the special case of . The agreement is very good, except for very close distances between the two screens a few percent of the total distance. IV. DIFFRACTION
OVER Fig. 5. Diffraction over the hill in Fig. 4. The eld is normalized to the free-space eld. The parameter is the maximum height in meters. The transition between the slope diffraction dominated curve ( = 0) and the amplitude diffracted case ( = 5 m) is clearly seen.

the diffracted eld after each screen has an amplitude and slope component, each determined by its own length parameter and , which are found by enforcing amplitude and slope continuity over the shadow boundary. This process becomes unwieldy analytically, but very easy in a numerical, recursive algorithm. It may best be understood by following an example for three screens (Fig. 2). The incident wave on edge 2 has contributions from the source and from edge 1. Thus, there are two shadow lines and, after edge 2, two amplitude waves and one slope wave. After edge 3, there are then two amplitude waves and two slope waves for this particular conguration of edges. At each point values must be found along the shadow lines all the way back to the original source. The value of the eld at the receiver is found through the basic UTD formula

SCREENS BY RECURSION

It is now possible to generalize the result above to the general case of screens by applying the following principles:

(19) is for each set of waves coming from edge 2, where the incident wave at the receiver point with screen 3 absent.

1096

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 45, NO. 7, JULY 1997

Fig. 6. Different ray contributions. For 2 100 m, there are two contributions: (a) the diffracted ray around the two outer hills and (b) the 150 m, only two is present. three-hill diffracted ray. For 100 m 2 For 2 150 m, the diffracted ray around the central hill (three) is added together with diffraction around hill 1 and 2 (and 2 and 3, not shown) to two.

h >

h < <h <

(a)

To nd this value, we need the incident eld when screen 2 is absent and so on, all the way back to the original source. Thus, it is seen that the eld at a given point after screens needs information from all previous screens for that point, transition zone diffraction has memory in contrast to the usual GTD multiplication of independent factors. An algorithm (according to the principles mentioned) has been produced and tested for the case of screens with equal heights and distances where the result is known [1], [9]. The result is shown in Fig. 3. It is noted that the slope diffraction gives an error about 1 dB after ten screens. This is inherent in the method since, even after two screens, there is an error if the observation point is too far away. The strength of the UTD solution is its generality; it is not necessary to have equal distances and equal heights. Another example with unequal heights (Fig. 4) is shown in Fig. 5. The scenario in Fig. 4 consists of six edges forming with a total distance between the a parabola with height antennas of 200 m. It is noted that the slope diffraction loses m its signicance with increasing height where for exponential decay takes over with a constant loss per screen. Vogler [1] treats a case with three edges, which is useful for a comparison and understanding of the details of this extension of UTD. The frequency is 100 MHz, the distance between antennas is 30 km, and at 10 and 20 km there are 100-m high hills (absorbing screens). A third hill is between the two with (Fig. 6). In a ray context, several different variable height contributions must be considered (Fig. 7) where the different numbers refer to the ray contributions on Fig. 6. When hill 2 is below the line of sight between hills 1 and 3, there are only two possible ray paths: 1) the 13 two-edge diffraction and 2) the 123 three-edge diffraction. This latter contribution is always present independent of the height of hill 2 and it is the between 100 and 150 m. For m, lineonly one for of-sight between the central hill and the two antennas starts appearing and contributions 3, 4, and 5 must be added to 2). Three is the one-edge diffraction around hill 2 without 1 and

(b) Fig. 7. (a) The different ray contributions in decibels for the situation of Fig. 6. (b) The different ray contributions added to form the total eld.

3 present, while four is the 12 two-edge diffraction and ve is the 23 diffraction. In Fig. 7(b), the different contributions are added to form the complete solution, which has continuity as a function of . The result agrees very well with the calculations of Vogler [1].

V. CONCLUSION The case of diffraction over multiple screens of arbitrary heights and spacings has been treated within the frame of the UTD. By including slope diffraction and enforcing continuity of amplitude and slope of the total eld after each diffraction, a solution is obtained that agrees (to a good approximation) with the known results for constant spacing and with numerical results. The limitation of the method is that it is not applicable when a spacing becomes very small relative to other spacings. Thus, the method cannot predict the collapse of two screens into one.

BACH ANDERSEN: UTD MULTIPLE-EDGE TRANSITION ZONE DIFFRACTION

1097

REFERENCES
[1] L. Vogler, An attenuation function for multiple knife-edge diffraction, Radio Sci., vol. 17, pp. 15411546, 1982. [2] H. L. Bertoni and J. Walsch, A theoretical model of UHF propagation in urban environments, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 36, pp. 17881796, Dec. 1988. [3] H. X. Xia and H. L. Bertoni, Diffraction of cylindrical and plane waves by an array of absorbing half-screens, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 40, pp. 170177, Feb. 1992. [4] M. I. Herman and J. L. Volakis, High frequency scattering by a double impedance wedge, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 36, pp. 664678, May 1988. [5] M. I. Herman and J. L. Volakis, High frequency scattering from polygonal impedance cylinders and strips, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 36, pp. 679689, May 1988. [6] M. Schneider and R. J. Luebbers, A general, uniform double wedge diffraction coefcient, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 39, pp. 814, Jan. 1991. [7] L. P. Ivrissimtzis and R. J. Marhefka, A note on double edge diffraction for parallel wedges, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 39, pp. 15321537, Oct. 1991. [8] S. W. Lee, Y. Rahmat-Samii, and R. C. Menendez, GTD, ray eld, and comments on two papers, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-26, pp. 352354, Mar. 1978. [9] J. B. Andersen, Transition zone diffraction by multiple edges, Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., Microwave Antennas Propagat., vol. 141, no. 5, pp. 382384, Oct. 1994.

[10] P. D. Holm, UTD diffraction coefcients for higher order wedge diffracted elds, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 44, pp. 879888, June 1996. [11] D. A. McNamara, C. W. I. Pistorius, and J. A. G. Malherbe, Introduction to the Uniform Geometrical Theory of Diffraction. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1990. [12] S. W. Lee, Path integrals for solving some electromagnetic edge diffraction problems, J. Mathem. Phys., vol. 19, pp. 14141422, 1978.

J. Bach Andersen (M68SM78F92) received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and the Doctor of Technology degree both from the Technical University of Denmark (TUD), Lyngby, in 1961 and 1971, respectively. From 1961 to 1973 he was with the Electromagnetics Institute at TUD. Since 1973 he has been with Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, where he is a Professor of radio communications. Presently he is Head of a research center at Aalborg University, Center for Personkommunikation (CPK), dealing with modern wireless communications. He has published widely on antennas, radio-wave propagation, and communications. He also has an interest in biomedical engineering and bioelectromagnetics. Dr. Andersen is a former Vice President of URSI.