Simulation of the indoor propagation of a 60 GHz electromagnetic wave with a time-dependent radiosity algorithm

This paper describes a new time-dependent radiosity method (extended to specular reflection) that simulates the indoor propagation of a 60GHz electromagnetic wave. The method requires two passes. During the first pass, the instantaneous radiosities for each patch are computed using a modified version of the progressive radiosity method. Energy exchanges between surface elements are performed through temporal form factors evaluated with a modified hemicube method accounting for specular reflection. To accelerate this first pass, the late reverberations (late multiple reflections) are not exactly computed with further iterations but rather estimated using the notion of ambient term borrowed from computer graphics and extended to specular reflection. During the second pass, a power profile (power captured by a receiving antenna) can be quickly evaluated at any location in the indoor environment. Our simulation method is fast and it requires little memory, It has been validated using real measurements performed in two real rooms. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.