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This thesis presents ambient energy data obtained from a measurement campaign carried out at an automobile plant. At the automobile plant, ambient light, ambient temperature and ambient radio frequency were measured during the day time over two days. The measurement results showed that ambient light generated the highest DC power. For plant and operation managers at the automobile plant, the measurement data can be used in system design considerations for future energy harvesting wireless sensor nodes at the plant. In addition, wideband measurements obtained from a machine workshop are presented in this thesis. The power delay profile of the wireless channel was obtained by using a frequency domain channel sounding technique. The measurements were compared with an equivalent ray tracing model in order to validate the suitability of the commercial propagation software used in this work. Furthermore, a novel technique for mathematically recreating the time dispersion created by factory inventory in a radio frequency channel is discussed. As a wireless receiver design parameter, delay spread characterizes the amplitude and phase response of the radio channel. In wireless sensor devices, this becomes paramount, as it determines the complexity of the receiver. In reality, it is sometimes difficult to obtain full detail floor plans of factories for deterministic modelling or carry out spot measurements during building construction. As a result, radio provision may be suboptimal. The method presented in this thesis is based on 3-D fractal geometry. By employing the fractal overlaying algorithm presented, metallic objects can be placed on a floor plan so as to obtain similar radio frequency channel effects. The environment created using the fractal approach was used to estimate the amount of energy a harvesting device can accumulate in a University machine workshop space.

Current propogation models are no longer sufficient for wireless network planning. They are neither accurate (empirical) nor fast enough (deterministic) to be applicable in the applications of Automated Cell Planning. This thesis focuses on the development of a new method, namely Intelligent Ray Launching Algorithm (IRLA), which is based on a fast, accurate and robust algorithm that is especially suitable for wireless network planning. The infrastructure of IRLA is thoroughly analysed in this thesis and the results are presented. Foster's design methodology has been used to parallelise the new model. Various scenarios for outdoor, indoor, indoor-to-outdoor and outdoor-to-indoor settings have been employed to test the effectiveness and efficiency of IRLA. The field strengths (path loss) and multipath information were calculated, which were used to demonstrate the application of IRLA. The accuracy of IRLA is guaranteed via the use of a meta-based heuristics calibration procedure. In order to achieve a simulation within a realistic time scale, acceleration techniques such as avoid double marking, multi-threading and the use of Parallel Object-Oriented Programming C++ have been employed. Since multipath for a large number of receiver locations can be easily obtained via IRLA, the study of delay spread has been presented. The success of the integration with a wireless network planning platform exemplifies that IRLA is suitable for wireless network planning and optimisation, which is beneficial to relevant academics and industries. Testing demonstrated that depending on various scenarios, IRLA obtains industrially-recognised accuracy ranging from 5 to 8 dB Root-Mean-Square-Error. This model is highly-efficient because its required runtime for most simulations is from a few seconds to a few minutes.