Path finding based on Monte Carlo Techniques Compared with a Full Ray-Tracing Approach in Narrow and Wide Bands

Efficient propagation prediction requires a tool both fast and accurate, which are two opposite features. Generally, such a tool is fast using crude approximation, leading to miss some propagation paths. Moreover, its accuracy is usually validated by some comparisons to measurement. Then, only the statistical behavior of such a tool is available, but not its particular one for a given scene. In this paper we propose a new optimization for finding the propagation paths, based on Monte Carlo techniques. It allows a theoretical knowledge of the error due to our approximation, so that any engineer can really choose between faster or accurate calculations. Our approach is compared with a Full Ray Tracing tool$,$: This allows to discuss on the validity of our model, and its gain in terms of computation time. Comparisons are produced both in narrow and wide bands.