Conclusions

In this section, the four different interpolation algorithms are compared to one another by analyzing the predicted power plots which are computed considering the corresponding antenna pattern.

This comparison is performed for three typical antennas used in the wireless communications domain (the antennas have different characteristics concerning the vertical and horizontal half-power beam width). Each of the antennas is used with two polarizations (+45°/-45°) and for two different heights of the transmitting antenna (one location below rooftop level and one above rooftop level). Therefore, general conclusions can be drawn.

Considering all the different cases the simple AM algorithm and the HPI algorithm has the best performance concerning the numerical evaluation. As the latter method indicates the better agreement of the interpolated 3D pattern to the measured 3D pattern when comparing the 3D views, this algorithm is recommended as the default algorithm.

Additionally, the HPI is the more generalizing approach due to the higher number of considered parameters (more information of the horizontal and vertical pattern is evaluated).

The bilinear interpolation methods (BI as well as WBI) produce good results concerning the agreement of the 3D view (when comparing the measured 3D pattern to the interpolated 3D pattern). However, the accuracy of these methods for the power prediction does not reach the accuracy of the HPI algorithm.