  This letter presents an experimental study and a novel modelling approach of
the wireless channel of smart utility meters placed in basements or sculleries.
The experimental data consist of signal strength measurements of consumption
report packets. Since such packets are only registered if they can be decoded
by the receiver, the part of the signal strength distribution that falls below
the receiver sensitivity threshold is not observable. We combine a Rician
fading model with a bias function that captures the cut-off in the observed
signal strength measurements. Two sets of experimental data are analysed. It is
shown that the proposed method offers an approximation of the distribution of
the signal strength measurements that is better than a na\"ive Rician fitting.
