The reliable prediction of coverage footprint result-
ing from an airborne wireless radio base station, is at utmost
importance, when it comes to the new emerging applications
of air-to-ground wireless services. These applications include the
rapid recovery of damaged terrestrial wireless infrastructure due
to a natural disaster, as well as the fulfillment of sudden wireless
traffic overload in certain spots due to massive movement of
crowds. In this paper, we propose a statistical propagation model
for predicting the air-to-ground path loss between a low altitude
platform and a terrestrial terminal. The prediction is based on the
urban environment properties, and is dependent on the elevation
angle between the terminal and the platform. The model shows
that air-to-ground path loss is following two main propagation
groups, characterized by two different path loss profiles. In this
paper we illustrate the methodology of which the model was
deduced, as well as we present the different path loss profiles
including the occurrence probability of each.
