Accurate estimation of the signal power received at a given location can be obtained through Ray Tracing (RT) propagation model. Nevertheless, processes involved in RT are extremely complex and not adapted for Radio Frequency (RF) mapping purposes. Particularly, the reception test process, responsible for validating received rays at given locations, contributes to over 98% of the overall RT complexity in large-scale scenarios. In this paper, we introduce a novel RT algorithm able to divide by a factor of 50 the RF map rendering time while limiting the difference in bitrate estimation to less than 1Mbps on average as compared to existing approaches. Our algorithm integrates hardware acceleration techniques for RT, proposes a new modeling of the terrain in the form of a triangular mesh, and introduces a new reception test able to efficiently calculate the signal power received per each triangle of the mesh. Our simulations show how these processes together can reduce the complexity of RF map generation, hence allowing the algorithm to scale to large-scale and precise scenarios.

Ray Tracing is an electromagnetic wave propagation modeling approach used for accurate generation of Quality of Service (QoS) maps in mobile networks. Due to its complexity, current implementation of Ray Tracing fails to generate such maps in wide areas. In this paper, we propose an optimization to Ray Tracing able to accurately generate QoS maps in a reasonable time. Using a site-specific ray launching technique and an alternative to the reception test process, we divide by almost 1200 the execution time of Ray Tracing with less than 2% of memory usage as compared to baseline solutions.

Ray Tracing is a propagation modelling approach that accurately estimates the signal power received by end users while taking into account the details of the environment in their vicinity. This accuracy is at the cost of high computational load and high memory consumption due to the heavy computation performed by processes such as Ray Generation. In this paper, we introduce a site-specific ray generation technique able to generate up to 1 million rays within 5 seconds and a root mean square error for bandwidth estimation within 2 Mbps. Depending on the location of the antenna and the coverage area, our technique gives the minimum possible number of rays required in order to estimate end-users' signal power received and their download bitrate.