buildingMaterialPermittivity

Permittivity and conductivity of building materials

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Syntax

[epsilon,sigma,complexepsilon] = buildingMaterialPermittivity(material,fc)

Description

example

[epsilon,sigma,complexepsilon] = buildingMaterialPermittivity(material,fc) calculates the relative permittivity, conductivity, and complex relative permittivity for the specified material at the specified frequency. The methods and equations modeled in the buildingMaterialPermittivity function are presented in Recommendation ITU-R P.2040 [1].

Examples

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Open Live Script

Calculate relative permittivity and conductivity at 9 GHz for various building materials as defined by textual classifications in ITU-R P.2040, Table 3.

material = ["vacuum";"concrete";"brick";"plasterboard";"wood"; ...
    "glass";"ceiling-board";"chipboard";"floorboard";"metal"];
fc = repmat(9e9,size(material)); % Frequency in Hz
[permittivity,conductivity] = ...
    arrayfun(@(x,y)buildingMaterialPermittivity(x,y),material,fc);

Display the results in a table.

varNames = ["Material";"Permittivity";"Conductivity"];
table(material,permittivity,conductivity,'VariableNames',varNames)
ans=10×3 table
       Material        Permittivity    Conductivity
    _______________    ____________    ____________

    "vacuum"                  1                 0  
    "concrete"             5.31           0.19305  
    "brick"                3.75             0.038  
    "plasterboard"         2.94          0.054914  
    "wood"                 1.99          0.049528  
    "glass"                6.27          0.059075  
    "ceiling-board"         1.5         0.0064437  
    "chipboard"            2.58           0.12044  
    "floorboard"           3.66          0.085726  
    "metal"                   1             1e+07
Open Live Script

Calculate the relative permittivity and conductivity for concrete at frequencies specified.

fc = ((1:1:10)*10e9); % Frequency in Hz
[permittivity,conductivity] = ...
    arrayfun(@(y)buildingMaterialPermittivity("concrete",y),fc);

Plot the relative permittivity and conductivity of concrete across the range of frequencies.

figure
yyaxis left
plot(fc,permittivity)
ylabel('Relative Permittivity')
yyaxis right
plot(fc,conductivity)
ylabel('Conductivity (S/m)')
xlabel('Frequency (Hz)')
title('Permittivity and Conductivity of Concrete')

Input Arguments

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Building material, specified as vector of strings including one or more of these options:

"vacuum""glass""very-dry-ground"
"concrete""ceiling-board""medium-dry-ground"
"brick""floorboard""wet-ground"
"plasterboard""chipboard" 
"wood""metal" 

Example: ["vacuum" "brick"]

Data Types: char | string

Carrier frequency in Hz, specified as a positive scalar.

Note

fc must be in the range [1e6, 10e6] when the material is "very-dry-ground", "medium-dry-ground" or "wet-ground".

Data Types: double

Output Arguments

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Relative permittivity of the building material, returned as a nonnegative scalar or row vector. The output dimension of epsilon matches that of the input argument material.

Conductivity, in Siemens/m, of the building material, returned as a nonnegative scalar or row vector. The output dimension of sigma matches that of the input argument material.

Complex relative permittivity of the building material, returned as a complex scalar calculated by

complexepsilon = epsilon – 1i sigma / (2πfcε0),

where ε0 = 8.854187817e-12 Farads/m. ε0 is the electric constant for the permittivity of free space.

The output dimension of complexepsilon matches that of the input argument material.

References

[1] ITU-R P.2040-1. "Effects of Building Materials and Structures on Radiowave Propagation Above 100MHz." International Telecommunications Union - Radiocommunications Sector (ITU-R). July 2015.

See Also

Functions

Objects

Introduced in R2020a

Antenna Toolbox Documentation
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