A Ray Tracing Tool for Propagation Modeling in Layered Media: A Case Study at the Chip Scale

Abstract

Nowadays, many wireless applications require the exchange of electromagnetic waves through propagation environments that look like to stratified media to some extent. This may concern both natural scenarios, e.g., air/vegetation/ground, and artificial structures, like meta-materials, photonic devices, solar cells or systems-on-chip. The characterization of the layered propagation channel is therefore important for the design and deployment of effective devices and systems. To this aim, the Dyadic Green Function method has been often leveraged, although its use is usually limited to simple sources, like short dipoles or current elements. Furthermore, it seems unsuited to assess the dispersive properties of the channel, which are known to become important when high data-rate must be conveyed. In this paper, a ray-based approach to propagation inside layers is proposed. As the layered environment can be quite reverberating, a great number of rays may be needed, to the extent that the corresponding computational burden might be hardly afforded by general purpose ray tracing tools. Therefore, the ray tracing engine here presented is specifically conceived for the layered case, and mostly relies on analytical formulation. The accuracy of the model is checked against measurement carried out at chip scale at optical frequency, as a reference study case.INDEX TERMS Electromagnetic propagation, layered media, ray tracing, system-on-chip, wireless communications.FRANCO FUSCHINI received the M.Sc. degree in telecommunication engineering and the Ph.D. degree in electronics and computer science from the University of Bologna in March 1999 and in July 2003, respectively, where he is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering "G. Marconi." He has authored or coauthored more than 30 journal papers on radio propagation and wireless system design. His main research interests are in the area of radio systems design and radio propagation channel theoretical modeling and experimental investigation. In April 1999, he was a recipient of the Marconi Foundation Young Scientist

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