US Patent 10291339 Evaluating near range communications quality

A method and system configured to evaluate near range communications quality in an environment. Data describing an environment is obtained from at least one data source (202). The data describing the environment is processed (204) to generate a ground-plane data set (206) describing a ground-plane of the environment, and a 3D object data set (206) describing 3D objects in the environment. These data are used to compute (208) a propagation path between a first location and a second location in the environment, and a near range communications quality characteristic of the propagation path is computed (210).