Evaluation of Radio over Sea Propagation Based ITU-R
Recommendation P.1546-5
Han Wang, Wencai Du, and Xing Chen
College of Information Science & Technology, Hainan University, 58 Renmin Ave., Haikou, Hainan 570228, China
Email: hanwang1214@gmail.com; wencai@hainu.edu.cn; waigongjiayou@live.com
Abstract—The propagation prediction research has mainly
focused on studying the radio propagation models in urban or
rural land areas. In this paper, we extend a method for 950 MHz
propagation prediction over sea based ITU-R Recommendation
P.1546-5. A gauge of the accuracy of the prediction Free Space
model, correction Okumura-Hata model and the P.1546-5
model is presented. The P.1546-5 is evaluated using
measurement results which were obtained by utilizing the pilot
signal in a commercial GSM network over sea around Haikou,
China. The comparison is enabled by using hit rate metrics.
Measurement results show that P.1546-5 model underestimates
the field strength about 6 dB on average for Haikou region in
South China Sea. However, the P.1546-5 prediction model
provides better accuracy prediction of the path loss compared to
the Free Space model and the correction Okumura-Hata model.
We provide proposals to enhance the sea propagation prediction
accuracy of ITU-R Recommendation P.1546.
Index Terms—Radio over sea propagation, Propagation
prediction, Hit rate metrics, ITU-R P.1546-5, Free space model,
Okumura-Hata model
I. INTRODUCTION
Hainan Province is located in the southernmost tip of
China, it comprises about 200 square kilometers sea area
which is about fifty-seven times its mainland area.
Numerous activities in the sea area such as offshore oil
exploitation, maritime transportation and marine fishery
make the maritime communications more and more
important. The current maritime communication models
mainly include signal sideband (SSB) short wave radio,
VHF radiotelephone, coast cellular mobile
communication network and maritime satellite
communication network [1]. Maritime VHF radio
telephone is mainly used for ship to shore and ship to ship
voice communication scenario while the transmission
distance should be less than 20 nautical miles. Maritime
satellite communication system [2], [3], such as the
Inmarsat-F system, Fleet-Broadband maritime data
service, is suitable for ocean sea ship communications,
but the satellite communication system is relatively costly,
the terminal equipment is expensive, accompanied with
higher maintenance and update costs and communication
Manuscript received January 20, 2015; revised April 10, 2015.
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China, Grant No. 61162010.
Corresponding author email: wencai@hainu.edu.cn.
doi:10.12720/jcm.10.4.231-237
fee, the data rate are far from the main user requirements.
Consequently, a maritime communication needs to be
further developed.
In recent years, there have been a lot of researches in
variety models of propagation prediction, well-known
propagation models are Longley-Rice model [4], Durkin
model and Okumura-Hata model [5]. They are all
applicable for the land scenario. Research on radio
propagation model over sea mainly utilize parabolic
equation method [6], [7], it takes into account phenomena
such as refection, refraction and diffraction. While in
line-of-sight propagation, it is usually regarded as free
space propagation [8], for non-line-of-sight propagation,
the path loss is calculated according to the experience of
chart. However, the conclusions of the tradition methods
are that none of the evaluated models are comprehensive
enough to predict radio propagation over sea. Hence, an
accurate prediction model for radio propagation over sea
needs to be further studied.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has
developed a new Recommendation on the method for
point to area predictions for terrestrial services in the
frequency rang 30 MHz to 3000MHz. The latest
Recommendation ITU-R P.1546-5 [10] is intended for
use on tropospheric radio circuits over land paths, sea
paths or mixed land-sea paths up to 1000km length for
effective transmitting antenna heights less than 3000 m.
The method is based on interpolation/extrapolation from
empirically derived field-strength curves as functions of
distance, antenna height, frequency and percentage time.
Currently, the ITU-R P.1546 is increasingly used as a
benchmark propagation method to analyze the radio wave
propagation. In [11], the Longley-Rice, ITU-R P.1546
and Hata-Davidson propagation models for DVB-T
coverage prediction was compared. In [12], a new
approach for 1 km urban propagation model of the
recommendation ITU-R P.1546 was proposed. The ITU-
R P.1546 is also utilized to combine with other model to
analyze some special propagation scenario [13]. But the
study of ITU-R P.1546 are mainly concentrated on the
radio propagation in land scenario.
In this paper, we focus on the prediction over sea
propagation. We extend the ITU-R P.1546-5 as a radio
over sea propagation model. Propagation measurement
results are compared with the prediction based
propagation model Recommendation ITU-R P.1546-5.
Some conventional empirical models, such as the Free
of Communications Vol. 10, No. 4, April 2015
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