Both empirical and ray-tracing models are powerful tools for studying propagation in indoor environments. Although the empirical models perform well in many cases, their physical significance is not clearly understood. Ray tracing is based on physics fundamentals, and its application as well as the interpretation of its results is more general. We compare the performance of both models for indoor environments. We found that the path-loss (PL) prediction error of the ray-tracing model is comparable to the error of the linear regression fit of the PL in a site-specific empirical model. Those empirical models provide some advantages when making estimations in the same environment in which they were trained, but their performance degrades in other environments. Ray-tracing models obtain better results when a wider range of application environments is sought. Ray tracing also provides a good insight into the specific propagation phenomena that take place in the wideband radio channel, so the relevant contributions can be identified.

中文翻译：

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室内无线电波传播的经验模型和光线追踪模型的比较 [无线角]

经验模型和光线追踪模型都是研究室内环境传播的有力工具。尽管经验模型在许多情况下表现良好，但它们的物理意义尚不清楚。光线追踪基于物理基础，其应用及其结果的解释更为普遍。我们比较了两种模型在室内环境中的性能。我们发现，光线追踪模型的路径损耗 (PL) 预测误差与特定地点经验模型中 PL 的线性回归拟合误差相当。这些经验模型在训练它们的同一环境中进行估计时提供了一些优势，但它们的性能在其他环境中会下降。当寻求更广泛的应用环境时，光线追踪模型可以获得更好的结果。光线追踪还可以很好地洞察宽带无线电信道中发生的特定传播现象，因此可以确定相关贡献。