Rural Databases

Topographical and Clutter Pixel Databases for Rural and Suburban Scenarios

Introduction


Databases to describe the scenario (topography, land usage,...) are very important for accurate propagation modeling. WinProp is very flexible and supports a huge number of data formats and coordinate systems. If an appropriate converter for you is not already available, AWE Communications will develop the converters you need if a format description and at least one sample data set is mailed to our support team.

Topographical Database / Digital Elevation Model (DEM)


The topography has a significant influence on the accuracy of the propagation model. Shadowing by hills is quite important and therefore highly accurate databases are required. Databases can be purchased in different resolutions from several distributors (see list below).


The USGS (United States Geological Survey) offers topographical databases from the whole earth for free download. This data can directly be converted with WinProp to WinProp's data format. So you can use WinProp together without any further costs for topographical databases.


 

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Click to enlarge

Topography of the city of Hong Kong (China),
(together with urban building data)

Clutter / Morpho / Land Usage


To increase the accuracy of the prediction, the land usage (forest, open area, suburban, urban, dense urban, traffic,...) at the receiver pixel can be used for a specific additional loss to be added to the receiver pixel. InWinProp this loss loss can be defined frequency dependent, i.e. different losses for different frequency bands.
Besides the loss at the reciver pixel the clutter database can also be used to define the ground properties (for ground reflection or scattering).

Click to enlarge

Clutter database (land usage) of the
area around Rimini (Italy).

Supported file formats and database suppliers


Very important for Radio Network Planning are accurate databases (DEM=Digital Elevation Models, clutter and land usage, etc.). WinProp has a very open interface to many database formats. Converters for nearly all popular database formats are available.

  • USGS (topographical databases for free download available)

  • HGT

  • MSI Planet (Marconi)

  • Siemens Tornado & Tornado N

  • Aircom Enterprise

  • Nokia NetAct & NPS/X

  • Ericsson TEMS

  • Agilent Wizard

  • ArcView Shapefile

  • ASCII Grid (*.asc)

Many companies offer databases and AWE Communications is working together with these companies. A vendor list with some of these companies helps our cutsomers to get the databases they are looking for.

Supported coordinate systems and datums


WinProp supports multiple coordinate systems. Click here to get a list of supported coordinate systems.

List with all supported coordinate systems

Overview over all rural prediction models.

List with selected  database vendors