Uncertainty propagation and sensitivity analysis in ray-tracing simulations
Abstract
Up to now, ray-tracing simulations are commonly used with a deterministic approach. Given the input parameters, the ray-tracing algorithm computes a value for the electric field. In this paper, we present a method that aims at computing the mean and standard deviation of the electric field. More precisely, we aim to obtain the probabilistic content of the electric field value and direction. We assume that this uncertainty results from input random variables which we consider uniformly distributed. Since ray-tracing computations have a high computational cost, we use spectral methods in order to optimize the number of simulations. We consider 2D electromagnetic propagation for the multi-path components, which can interact with the environment through four processes: transmission, single reflection, double reflection and diffraction. These are modelled using adequate coefficients. In order to calculate the polynomial chaos expansion coefficients, we use the projection method and Gauss-Legendre quadratures. These coefficients can then be used to determine the Sobol indices of input parameters. This is done in order to neglect variables in practical computation of the uncertainties.