Oldham D., Haron Z.

The modelling of noise propagation in urban environments is a topic of considerable interest at the present time. Current methods include ray tracing, radiosity and diffusion models. In this paper a new method is presented based upon Markovian matrices. In this initial study a dimensional model is employed to establish the principle of the approach in the context of noise propagation in a simple city street. The approach is then extended to the case of a regular array of distributed sound scattering surfaces similar to the case of dwelling in sub urban areas. Finally, the method is extended to consider the effect of a distribution of scatterering surfaces in an urban street channel. Comparisons are made with the results of ray tracing simulations.