Site-specific Channel Modeling Based on Remote-Sensing Maps for 6G Space--Air--Ground Digital Twins

Abstract

Site-specific channel models are essential for wireless digital twins of 6G space--air--ground communication systems. However, 3D maps are difficult to obtain over wide areas, which limits large-area site-specific channel modeling. To address this issue, this paper proposes a remote-sensing-based augmented ray-tracing channel modeling framework. The framework comprises a deterministic RT branch, a measurement-statistical branch, and an RT augmentation branch. To overcome the difficulty of acquiring large-area 3D maps, the deterministic RT branch reconstructs a 3D RT scene from satellite remote-sensing imagery and calibrates its electromagnetic material parameters using measured path loss. To provide the statistical parameters required for RT augmentation, the measurement-statistical branch establishes the marginal distributions and interparameter dependence models of the channel parameters. Specifically, a wideband UAV channel measurement campaign is conducted at 4.60 GHz, and a proposed multipath estimation method estimates the complex amplitudes, delays, and Doppler shifts of the measured multipath. To bridge the gap between RT predictions and measurements, the RT augmentation branch organizes the RT multipath into LoS, LoS-tail, and NLoS components, generates additional short-delay LoS-tail paths, and reallocates the component and path powers according to the measurement-derived statistics while preserving the total RT received power. The validation results show that the proposed framework reduces the path loss RMSE from 5.45 to 4.35 dB and, relative to calibrated RT, decreases the RMS delay spread and normalized Doppler spread RMSEs by 53.03 and 26.48, respectively. The proposed framework provides a site-specific channel modeling approach for 6G space--air--ground digital-twin studies.