[GRASS-user] LOS, Fresnel Zones, Multi-Line wave propagtion and GHz communications

[Tom Russo]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 05:36:18PM +0200, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <peter.hopfgartner at r3-gis.com> flavor, containing:
> Dylan Beaudette wrote:
>> 
>> There is also an open source application called 'splat' :
>> http://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/splat.html
>> 
>> I do not know if splat can account for near-surface conditions (i.e.
>> Fresnel Zone) or higher elevation atmospheric parameters (ionosphere).
>> 
>> It would be nice to have a couple of more robust LOS-like modules in
>> GRASS for this type of work.
>> 
> 
> from the description on the web page it seems that Fresnel Zones are in 
> SPLAT, at least in recent versions.
> 
> I will have a look at it, tomorrow.
> 

SPLAT is pretty cool, and if all you want is to compute some RF coverage
maps it works well as a standalone application.  It would make an interesting 
project for GRASS integration.

As distributed, SPLAT only works when you give it digital elevation models
in a very specific file format, and it produces PPM output (not
georeferenced) to display its results.

I've often thought that it would be cool to adapt it to a GRASS module that
can work with any GRASS elevation data and produce a GRASS raster of RF 
loss and radio coverage instead of an ungeoreferenced image file.  SPLAT 
itself is a fairly simple program once you get digging in it (the math is
not simple, but the code structure is), but the integration project has always 
been too daunting for me.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick