Rural / Suburban Propagation
The workflow for a typical rural or suburban simulation is to import the terrain profile into ProMan, AMan to produce the antenna pattern and ProMan to simulate the model and view the results.
- WallMan is usually not needed since a terrain profile is usually generated by a third party and imported directly into ProMan. However, a terrain profile can be imported into WallMan in special cases.
- Use Feko or AMan to
produce the antenna pattern.
For antenna design and simulation, Feko can be used. Feko can export antenna patterns in .ffe format, which ProMan can import.
AMan is not an antenna simulator. Instead, it is a tool that enables you to produce an antenna pattern in WinProp format. The pattern may be converted from another source. AMan can generate an approximate 3D antenna pattern in cases where only two 2D pattern cuts are available and can combine antenna patterns to produce that of a base station.
Figure 1. Base station patterns produced in AMan by combining individual antenna patterns with the geometrical and material specifications of the base station mounting structure. - Start a new rural / suburban database in ProMan. Along
with the topology (elevation) database, a land-usage (clutter) database can be
loaded. A topology database specifies the hills while a land-usage database specifies
the kind of surface the signals encounter, for example, forest, fields, water,
sub-urban and buildings.
Figure 2. Example land-usage database, used in addition to an elevation.
Figure 3. The key menu in ProMan is . - Run the simulation in ProMan through the
Computation menu or by clicking the RUN
PRO button.
Figure 4. Click the RUN PRO button to run the simulation. - Inspect the results in the same ProMan interface.
Expand the tree on the left if necessary to access the results.
Figure 5. Example coverage results for the Grand Canyon, computed with the dominant path model. Transmitter power 40 dBm, frequency 948 MHz.