Radio Coverage Prediction for Railways Based on GIS+BIM

Radio coverage prediction is crucial for designing railway wireless networks. If the prediction result is inaccurate, it can cause problems such as poor coverage, low network quality, or extra adjustments of the base station locations during railway construction and testing. Ray-tracing technology can predict radio propagation accurately based on high-precision 3D models of the environment. However, since the landform can change dramatically during railway construction, using maps or models obtained at the early stages of construction may not reflect the final railway environment, which restricts the usage of ray-tracing technology. In this paper, we propose a method that compounds 3D Geographic Information System (GIS) maps and Building Information Modeling (BIM) design models to simulate the final railway environment and perform ray-tracing radio coverage prediction based on it. The results show that this method can capture the impact of the environment on radio propagation and improve the accuracy and efficiency of the calculation.