GRASS-RaPlaT
Radio
Planning Tool for GRASS GIS system
Version 3.1, April 2023
GRASS-RaPlaT
is an open-source radio-planning tool. It comprises a number of modules
(RaPlaT) that integrate with the GRASS-GIS system (Geographical Resources Analysis
Support System) and compute radio signal coverage in a given
geographical environment. The results are stored as GRASS-GIS maps and can be written to a standard database (MySQL, PostgreSQL)
for further processing.
RaPlaT has been originally developed for mobile phone network
(cellular network) coverage computation and therefore supports
multi-transmitter systems, but can also be used for a single
transmitter/antenna.
The
supplied RaPlaT modules (below) were designed for radio coverage calculation of
GSM/UMTS systems, but - with the supplied radio propagation model modules - it
can also be applied to other wireless systems in the frequency range 400 MHz –
2.4 GHz (e.g. TETRA, WiFi). Due to its open source
modular design, users can create additional custom modules for other radio
propagation models and frequency ranges.
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r.fspl - Free Space |
r.hata / r.cost231 |
r.hataDEM |
r.waik |
Besides
the radio propagation model modules (above), there are
two additional modules. The first one, r.sector, takes into account the radiation pattern of an
actual antenna as specified by its corresponding MSI file. The second one, r.MaxPower,
combines the results of individual antennas into the complete radio network
coverage (the example below is for a single transmitter with three antennas).
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r.sector |
r.MaxPower |
The user
does not need to deal with calling individual modules (above). Instead, he/she
prepares a data table describing the transmitter network and then calls the
main script, r.raplat,
which takes care of everything else. The script, as well as all the modules,
run inside the GRASS environment. GRASS is also used to display graphical
results. The results can also be stored in a standard database (e.g. PostgreSQL
or MySQL) for further processing with other tools.
Downloads
- RaPlaT distribution
with demo
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RaPlaT_modules_public_apr2023
(zip)
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RaPlaT_demo_apr2023 (zip)
- Documentation
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User Manual 3.1 (pdf, Ubuntu 22.04 & 20.04)
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User Manual 3.0 (pdf, Ubuntu 18.04 & 16.04)
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Video presentation (avi) (*)
The tool is released under the GNU General Public License.
(*) The above video was prepared back in 2015 and is a bit outdated.
Nevertheless, it is still useful as a quick introduction to RaPlaT, as the main
properties of the GRASS and RaPlaT have not changed much since then.