INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF BUILDING MATERIALS ON RADIO WAVES PROPAGATION

Abstract

In outdoor environment, radio waves propagation is mostly affected due to the reflection, diffraction and scattering of the waves by obstacles within the surroundings such as trees, building structures, moving cars and planes among others. While on the other hand, in indoor environment, radio waves propagation is mostly affected due to multipath and signal attenuation or absorption by the building materials such as the type of the block and the roof used in the construction, interior walls, floors, metallic objects such as whiteboards, bookcases, standing air conditioners and items of furniture. Since transmission and reception of signals is mostly from outdoor to indoor environment, there is need to quantify the various contribution by these factors on the signal strength for it to be estimated at the receiving end. This research work investigated GSM signal strength variation in and around mud buildings with rusted corrugated iron sheet roofs materials. Average Building Penetration Loss (APL) was then computed and compared with that obtained from other buildings built with different materials. Handheld A Aronia HF2025E spectrum analyzer was used as the receiver which recorded the received signal strength (RSS) at each point of the measurement. The network of four service providers; Airtel, MTN, Globacom and Etisalat were used as the operating frequencies. Results obtained showed that among the various combination of materials considered, mud buildings with rusted corrugated iron sheet roof presents higher average signal loss of – 9.97 dBm, while sandcrete building with non - rusted corrugated iron sheet roof had lower average signal loss of – 7.20 dBm.

KEYWORDS: Building materials, Outdoor to indoor environment, Radio waves propagation and Signal  strength