Difference between revisions of "Pathloss 5 - Revision history"

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== Pathloss 5 - revision date February 15, 2017 ==
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 +
Fixed bug that was causing inconsistant results on interference calculations.
 +
 +
== Pathloss 5 - revision date February 8, 2017 ==
 +
 +
Fixed interference problem where OHLOSS profile would not complete over certain elevation DEMs.
 +
 +
== Pathloss 5 - revision date November 30, 2016 ==
 +
 +
Fixed bug in summary and detail reports that was incorrectly had the heading EIRP (should be ERP) when frequency was below 890 Mhz.
 +
 +
== Pathloss 5 - revision date March 16, 2016 ==
 +
 +
Fixed memory leak that would occur when calculating diffraction loss with building ranges. Generating profiles using vector building clutter was especially susceptible to this bug.
 +
 +
Interference calculation using XPIC. The interference reports for cases involving XPIC operation have been modified. The horizontally polarized receiver and the vertical polarized frequency are now considered as two separate cases. The previous version considered both H and V as the same receiver.
 +
 +
== Pathloss 5 - revision date February 28, 2016 ==
 +
 +
Assigned antenna heights added to link text import.
 +
 +
Auto link design: fixed or assigned antenna heights are always referenced from the ground, even if a building exists at the end points.
 +
 +
== Pathloss 5 - revision date January 28, 2016 ==
 +
 +
GIS system updated to read large .grc format clutter files.
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 +
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== Pathloss 5 - revision date January 25, 2016 ==
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 +
Using the antenna configuration TRDR_TRDR with the DR antenna missing at one site, and with frequency diversity in both directions, the quad diversity calculation is not correct for the site with the missing DR antenna.
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 +
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== Pathloss 5 - revision date December 10, 2015 ==
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Link to Nearest Sites (Automatic mesh creation): The Create P2P Links Operation can now link a group of sites to their nearest N neighbors, where N is a integer between 1 - 10.
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Groups Add on Condition: You can now add links to a group on using relative clearance as a criteria. Clearance is calculated relative to a clearance criteria provided in the dialog Box.
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== Pathloss 5 - revision date October 30, 2015 ==
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 +
NED data (in BIL format) downloaded using the MRLC viewer can now be indexed and used in Pathloss.
 +
 +
If using fixed height clearance criteria that is greater than the minimum antenna heights on a line of sight path, calculated antenna heights may be a lower than the fixed height criteria.
 +
 +
True azimuth added to the Terrain data report.
 +
 +
Pathloss 5 will no longer offer to delete .pl5 files from disk.
 +
 +
Center line ray is now drawn in profile report even if all fresnel zones are turned off.
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 +
RX Level for links exported to google earth
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 +
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== Pathloss 5 - revision date April 23, 2015 ==
 +
 +
More multi-select dialog fixes.
 +
 +
Fixed error in the Reflective plane analysis module that would incorrectly calculate the orientation loss between mains when a downtilt was applied to an antenna.
 +
 +
== Pathloss 5 - revision date April 20, 2015 ==
 +
 +
Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when Ctrl-clicking or click-dragging to select multiple files in some open file dialogs.
 +
 +
Using Mouse Wheel to zoom will now override vector drawing operations.
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 +
Fixed duplicate entries in the terrain data module when using vector elevation data.
 +
 +
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== Pathloss 5 - revision date April 10, 2015 ==
 +
 +
When using the auto-designer to create links with fixed antenna heights, the antenna heights will be on top of buildings at the profile ends derived from a vector source.
 +
 +
=== Import link text file ===
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For adaptive modulation radios, the operation of the maximum and minimum modulation fields now allows a single modulation to be specified.
 +
 +
== Pathloss 5 - revision date April 1, 2015 ==
 +
 +
Bug fix in the GIS system that would cause intermittent problems when reading from South West oriented raster elevation models.
 +
 +
Un-checking the "Show area study" check box from a site in the site list would invalidate the whole area study. This has been fixed so that individual sites can be toggled on or off in an area study.
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 +
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== Pathloss 5 - revision date March 18, 2015 ==
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Pathloss can now use the NLCD 2011 data acquired from the MRLC Map viewer: http://www.mrlc.gov/viewerjs/ . The procedure for using the data in Pathloss has not changed: http://www.pathloss.com/pwiki/index.php?title=Terrain_data
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== Pathloss 5 - revision date February 12, 2015 ==
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=== Export to Alcatel ANS File format ===
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This function was available in Pathloss Version 4 and is now available in version 5. In any of the link  design sections. Click Files - Export - Alcatel USA
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=== Tree Loss ===
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Tree loss is calculated as the minimum of the values produced by a knife edge-algorithm and a lateral wave travelling along the tree tops.
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Changes have been made to program to smooth the transition between the two algorithms when a switch between the two occurs.
 +
 +
The tree loss algorithm starts by determining the tree or building horizons along the path. These horizons determine the structure clearance. If a tree is removed from the profile, the user would expect that the
 +
overall tree loss will be less; however if tree removal affects the location of the horizons, the tree loss may change; however the loss may not always decrease.
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 +
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== Pathloss 5 - revision date January 19, 2015 ==
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 +
Edit Modify Links CSV report on existing links would show the antenna heights reversed if the .pl5 profile had been reversed.
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=== Profile display report ===
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A new profile display format has been added to this build. This format uses a single curve to represent a clearance criteria. The earth radius factor, percent first Fresnel zone and the fixed height are combined in a single curve. The intention was to simplify the display; in particular when the profile includes clutter.
 +
 +
This display option will use the clearance criteria for the file. When multiple criteria have been specified for main and diversity antennas and these criteria include a fixed height component, we recognize that the resulting display is not usable.
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A display problem occurs when terrain elevation range is very large compared to the clearance range.
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== Pathloss 5 - revision date December 12, 2014 ==
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=== Link csv Import and Export - Adaptive modulation radios ===
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The maximum, minimum and reference modulation states are exported in the format 128QAM without the throughput.
 +
 +
The import of these parameters will correctly set these values, provided that the corresponding radio data file is included in the import
 +
 +
=== Frequency Assignments ===
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Polarization discrepancies between the pl5 file and the network display could occur. The operation now allows for multiple frequency assignments. The link label format in the frequency assignment mode is of the form 6H-3V-?V where  6H and 3V are the channel numbers followed by the polarization. The ?V is the channel to be added. Be sure to set the polarization before adding the channel.
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 +
Note that the channel number is the index in the frequency plan file and not the actual channel ID text in the file.
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== Pathloss 5 - revision date November 27, 2014 ==
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=== Ant_Rad (*.dat antenna data files) ===
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A side effect of the changes made to the ant_rad program in "Build Date September 19, 2014" was to invert the antenna radiation patterns in the binary conversion of the older ASCII *.dat antenna files.
 +
 
== Pathloss 5 - revision date November 18, 2014 ==
 
== Pathloss 5 - revision date November 18, 2014 ==
  

Latest revision as of 16:49, 15 February 2017

Contents

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 15, 2017

Fixed bug that was causing inconsistant results on interference calculations.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 8, 2017

Fixed interference problem where OHLOSS profile would not complete over certain elevation DEMs.

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 30, 2016

Fixed bug in summary and detail reports that was incorrectly had the heading EIRP (should be ERP) when frequency was below 890 Mhz.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 16, 2016

Fixed memory leak that would occur when calculating diffraction loss with building ranges. Generating profiles using vector building clutter was especially susceptible to this bug.

Interference calculation using XPIC. The interference reports for cases involving XPIC operation have been modified. The horizontally polarized receiver and the vertical polarized frequency are now considered as two separate cases. The previous version considered both H and V as the same receiver.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 28, 2016

Assigned antenna heights added to link text import.

Auto link design: fixed or assigned antenna heights are always referenced from the ground, even if a building exists at the end points.

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 28, 2016

GIS system updated to read large .grc format clutter files.


Pathloss 5 - revision date January 25, 2016

Using the antenna configuration TRDR_TRDR with the DR antenna missing at one site, and with frequency diversity in both directions, the quad diversity calculation is not correct for the site with the missing DR antenna.


Pathloss 5 - revision date December 10, 2015

Link to Nearest Sites (Automatic mesh creation): The Create P2P Links Operation can now link a group of sites to their nearest N neighbors, where N is a integer between 1 - 10.

Groups Add on Condition: You can now add links to a group on using relative clearance as a criteria. Clearance is calculated relative to a clearance criteria provided in the dialog Box.


Pathloss 5 - revision date October 30, 2015

NED data (in BIL format) downloaded using the MRLC viewer can now be indexed and used in Pathloss.

If using fixed height clearance criteria that is greater than the minimum antenna heights on a line of sight path, calculated antenna heights may be a lower than the fixed height criteria.

True azimuth added to the Terrain data report.

Pathloss 5 will no longer offer to delete .pl5 files from disk.

Center line ray is now drawn in profile report even if all fresnel zones are turned off.

RX Level for links exported to google earth


Pathloss 5 - revision date April 23, 2015

More multi-select dialog fixes.

Fixed error in the Reflective plane analysis module that would incorrectly calculate the orientation loss between mains when a downtilt was applied to an antenna.

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 20, 2015

Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when Ctrl-clicking or click-dragging to select multiple files in some open file dialogs.

Using Mouse Wheel to zoom will now override vector drawing operations.

Fixed duplicate entries in the terrain data module when using vector elevation data.


Pathloss 5 - revision date April 10, 2015

When using the auto-designer to create links with fixed antenna heights, the antenna heights will be on top of buildings at the profile ends derived from a vector source.

Import link text file

For adaptive modulation radios, the operation of the maximum and minimum modulation fields now allows a single modulation to be specified.

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 1, 2015

Bug fix in the GIS system that would cause intermittent problems when reading from South West oriented raster elevation models.

Un-checking the "Show area study" check box from a site in the site list would invalidate the whole area study. This has been fixed so that individual sites can be toggled on or off in an area study.


Pathloss 5 - revision date March 18, 2015

Pathloss can now use the NLCD 2011 data acquired from the MRLC Map viewer: http://www.mrlc.gov/viewerjs/ . The procedure for using the data in Pathloss has not changed: http://www.pathloss.com/pwiki/index.php?title=Terrain_data


Pathloss 5 - revision date February 12, 2015

Export to Alcatel ANS File format

This function was available in Pathloss Version 4 and is now available in version 5. In any of the link design sections. Click Files - Export - Alcatel USA

Tree Loss

Tree loss is calculated as the minimum of the values produced by a knife edge-algorithm and a lateral wave travelling along the tree tops.

Changes have been made to program to smooth the transition between the two algorithms when a switch between the two occurs.

The tree loss algorithm starts by determining the tree or building horizons along the path. These horizons determine the structure clearance. If a tree is removed from the profile, the user would expect that the overall tree loss will be less; however if tree removal affects the location of the horizons, the tree loss may change; however the loss may not always decrease.


Pathloss 5 - revision date January 19, 2015

Edit Modify Links CSV report on existing links would show the antenna heights reversed if the .pl5 profile had been reversed.

Profile display report

A new profile display format has been added to this build. This format uses a single curve to represent a clearance criteria. The earth radius factor, percent first Fresnel zone and the fixed height are combined in a single curve. The intention was to simplify the display; in particular when the profile includes clutter.

This display option will use the clearance criteria for the file. When multiple criteria have been specified for main and diversity antennas and these criteria include a fixed height component, we recognize that the resulting display is not usable.

A display problem occurs when terrain elevation range is very large compared to the clearance range.

Pathloss 5 - revision date December 12, 2014

Link csv Import and Export - Adaptive modulation radios

The maximum, minimum and reference modulation states are exported in the format 128QAM without the throughput.

The import of these parameters will correctly set these values, provided that the corresponding radio data file is included in the import

Frequency Assignments

Polarization discrepancies between the pl5 file and the network display could occur. The operation now allows for multiple frequency assignments. The link label format in the frequency assignment mode is of the form 6H-3V-?V where 6H and 3V are the channel numbers followed by the polarization. The ?V is the channel to be added. Be sure to set the polarization before adding the channel.

Note that the channel number is the index in the frequency plan file and not the actual channel ID text in the file.

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 27, 2014

Ant_Rad (*.dat antenna data files)

A side effect of the changes made to the ant_rad program in "Build Date September 19, 2014" was to invert the antenna radiation patterns in the binary conversion of the older ASCII *.dat antenna files.

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 18, 2014

CSV Link reports II

The maximum, minimum and reference modulation values for adaptive modulation radios are now reported as modulation (throughput) instead of the index.

Frequency Coordination CSV report

The Transmit channel assignments and polarizations are now included in this report as the requested frequency assignments. These values are located in the TX channel assignment table in the Transmission analysis design section.

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 6, 2014

Fixed vertical scaling error when displaying the profile on some reports.


Pathloss 5 - revision date October 29, 2014

Interference calculations involving single rectangular passive repeaters, used the "right" side azimuth to determine the passive discrimination to an interfering signal. Depending on the arrangement in the pl5 file containing the passive, the required azimuth could be the "left" side.

Cross polarized discrimination on both single and double rectangular passives previously used the passive repeater discrimination. The passive repeater discrimination is now a separate line item in the case detail report. The cross polarized improvement is determined by the victim receiver and the interfering transmitter antennas. Polarization rotation due the rectangular passives is not considered.


Pathloss 5 - revision date October 17, 2014

Interference calculation would not automatically calculate OHLOSS if a clutter database is being used.

Zooming the profile display in some modules would not correctly display clutter.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 10, 2014

Minor revisions.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 6, 2014

Minor bug fixes.

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 19, 2014

Antenna data files

Antenna data files created with the May 22, 2014 or later version of ANT_RAD program may have corrupted radiation patterns. The symptoms are as follows:

The ASCII file is for a microwave antenna and contains radiation patterns for 4 polarization combinations HH, HV, VV, and VH. The converted binary ASD file will only contain three patterns HH, VV and VH.

The Pathloss program PL50 and PL50L will check for this condition and issue a warning. The antenna data file must be reconverted from the original ASCII format to the binary ASD format using the September 19, 2014 or later version of the ANT_RAD program. These newly converted ASD files must be reloaded into the affected pl5 files.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 14, 2014

OHLOSS calculations in an interference analysis can use clutter. See the document http://www.pathloss.com/p5/docs/ohloss_clutter.pdf for details.

Antenna 3 dB beam width in the Multipath-Reflections design section. The vertical beam width is used in this this design section. If an elevation 3 dB beam width is not available in the antenna specifications, then the horizontal beam width will be used.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 1, 2014

NLCD clutter data that represented buildings was not being properly used for diffraction loss calculations in the local and area studies.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 30, 2014

Path data entry form for ITU-R P.530-7/8 multipath fade method. The variables "Path type, Water type and Use over water modifications" would always be set to the default values if the cancel button was clicked rather than the values shown on entry to the dialog.

dN/dh - K statistics display

The dN/dh and K values for 1%, 10%, 50%, 90% and 99% time percentages is available. The data is based on ITU-R P.543. This data can be accessed in the Antenna heights, Diffraction and Multipath-Reflections design sections by clicking on the "dN/dh - K" panel on the status bar.

Adaptive modulation transmission calculation ANSI mode

If one direction of transmission had a negative fade margin (RX signal less than RX threshold), the 2 way total time below level was shown as the availability in the direction with a positive fade margin.

Import link text file

If the text file contains a radio data file name, the application type (microwave, adaptive modulation, land mobile) is set to the application specified in the radio data file.

The maximum, minimum and reference modulations can be specified in the text file for adaptive modulation radios. The modulations are specified by a number in the range 1 to 10. The lowest number is the maximum modulation, the highest number is the minimum modulation.


CSV Reports II

Now exports the maximum and minimum modulations and the reference modulation for adaptive modulation radios. The ATPC and Power reduction fields in the channel assignments table are now also exported.

Terrain Data Design Section

Bug fix: If a description only clutter data base (e.g. NLCD) is configured and the Edit Clutter window has been opened, then if another design section is accessed, while this window is open, the program would crash.

ATPC

The ATPC section in the Frequency Assignments dialog now operates separately from the actual channel assignment. Both fixed ATPC values and values based on a required RX signal are available. In addition ATPC can be automatically added in the TX channel table based on the values in the radio data file


Pathloss 5 - revision date July 10, 2014

Bug fixes

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 4, 2014

Import link text file

Equipment import is handled slightly different between adaptive modulation and microwave/land mobile applications:

If a CSV link file contains an adaptive modulation radio data file, all radio parameters will be taken from the radio data file. Parameters such as TX power or RX threshold in the csv file will be ignored.

If the CSV file contains a conventional microwave radio or land mobile radio data file, parameters such as TX power or RX threshold level etc. will be taken from the csv file instead of the radio file data. The radio data file will be used to fill in any missing parameters.


Automatic link design

The clearance analysis (0=clearance criteria met, +X=excess clearance of X, -X=clearance criteria not met by X) would only be calculated if the "Calculate - set antenna heights design scope was checked. This restriction has been removed.

Base Station Equipment

Use of a radio data file with multiple TX power and RX selectivity options always used the first entry regardless of user selection.

Pathloss 5 - revision date June 26, 2014

If the "Ignore selective fading" was set in a Microwave application, opening the radio data entry form in the Link Design rules could cause a program crash.

Terrain data module: Operations delete point did not correctly delete the clutter over a selection.


Pathloss 5 - revision date June 16, 2014

If the "Ignore selective fading" was set in a Microwave application, opening the radio data entry form in the Link Design rules could cause a program crash.


Pathloss 5 - revision date May 26, 2014

Import Link CSV file

If the CSV file contained an adaptive modulation radio data file, the file was not completely processed when added to the pl5 file.


Pathloss 5 - revision date May 22, 2014

Ant_rad - Version 5 antenna data files

ASCII files with more than 48 characters in the Description 1 field could not be read

SLR and SLL polarizations are converted to V and H. This is a temporary measure until these polarizations can be correctly handled in the Pathloss program

Import PL5 files

PL5 file can now be imported into a group

Space Diversity antenna combinations

Provision has been made to temporarily switch the transmitter to the diversity antenna at either or both ends of the path. The intent is to show the EIRP and the availability in any combination.

This option is in the Transmission analysis design section under Operations - Diversity parameters

Point to Multipoint automatic link design

Certain combinations of non symmetrical sectorized antennas at the base station could cause a program crash.

The link list now includes the sector number at the base station in a PTMP link. PTMP (base-S2)

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 24, 2014

CapacityUtilization field added to Ericsson NCF export feature

Path profile reports only showed a maximum of 3 Fresnel zone references in the system data box. This has been changed to 4.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 26, 2014

Base station CSV reports did not show the mobile / remote antenna height field.

ASR and tower height with app add to the Site text export in the Site List.

Negative average annual temperature could not be manually entered.

Fresnel zones pointed to a reflection point were corrupted if the measurement system was changed.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 17, 2014

Bug fixes related to Ericsson NCF export feature

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 5, 2014

Fixed recently introduced crash commonly encountered when entering or leaving the Antenna Heights module. Important: If you are using a build from earlier in 2014 it is highly recommended that this update be installed.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 24, 2014

Multiple stability fixes in Pathloss 5 Link program.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 19, 2014

The following Transverse mercator projections were not implemented in the GIS configuration:

  • Danish System 34 Jylland-Fyn
  • Danish System Sjaelland)
  • Danish System 45 Bornholm
  • Finnish KKJ Zone 1 to 4

Files - Export

A Network Configuration File export has been added. This produces an XML file for the Ericsson MINI-LINK configuration generator.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 4, 2014

Under certain conditions the hybrid diversity reports showed different space diversity improvement factors at each end. The SDIF at the non diversity site is always taken to be the same as the diversity site.

The "Increase height range at Site 2 message when could appear when defining a plane.

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 29, 2014

Added Support for the Ellipse and Rectangle types when using MapInfo vector data.

The transmission summary and detail reports using the time below level option for adaptive modulation radios did not show the effective fade margin.

On close coupled double passive repeaters, the passive calculations would not complete under some conditions

Pathloss 5 - revision date December 18, 2013

Fixed problem that could cause a network display with a geographic grid to not print properly.

General Sudies

The Okumura Hata model has been revised as per ITU-R S.M.2028-1 and ITU-R P.1546-4

Co-channel operation

Exiting the cochannel operations dialog under some conditions may not update the worksheet to show Flat fade margin.

GIS Configuration

The Reseau Geodesique Francais 1993 datum and the Lambert-93 projection have added to the GIS section.


Pathloss 5 - revision date November 13, 2013

Fixed bug causing Certain DEM types to fail if index items were removed.

Fixed thematic link type dialog that was not displaying correctly on Windows Aero theme.

Minor bug fixes.

CSV export

The sector number has been added to the export for point to multipoint systems. This information is also availabile in the automated design operations.


Pathloss 5 - revision date October 9, 2013

The Reflection analysis report for the reflective plane method includes a listing of the null depths.

The diffraction summary in the Diffraction design section could crash if only clutter loss calculations were calculated.

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 5, 2013

The FCC EIRP warning now lists the maximum EIRP for the specific path. Note that in some frequency bands the maximum EIRP is a function of the path length.

The length of the exclusion zone in local and area studies can now be specified. This applies to description only clutter data bases.

PL5 RTF reports

Under some conditions the report template or a blank report was displayed. This has been corrected.

Import text files

Long sessions in the import text files feature could result in program instabilities


Pathloss 5 - revision date August 20, 2013

Groups

The order of items in a group (sites or links) can now be set. The position of each item can be individually set or an automatic setting based on geographic position (east, west, north or south) or alphabetical can be used. This is done from the Group - Add Edit box.

This order determines the order in all reports

Other corrections

Closing the Diffraction or Multipath design sections from the file menu could also close the Network display.

Export to Google earth update

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 14, 2013

When printing the entire network display with a geographic grid, the printout will be szed to include the axis labels.

Google earth KML Export

Antenna and Radio code and model are now included in the link description.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 26, 2013

The atmospheric absorption loss values used in interference calculations were less that the actual values. Typical differences were 0.2 dB compared to the actual value of 0.5.

The selected modulation states for adaptive modulation radios do not have to be contiguous. This requirement is for Aviat radios.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 18, 2013

Printing the network display directly to the printer

If the network display contains an image backdrop such as a tiff file, the print quality of the image has been improved. Depending on the resolution of the image the time to print the image can be several minutes. On large areas, a memory allocation may occur. The printing will then default to the existing print routine.


Pathloss 5 - revision date June 26, 2013

Revisions to the base station CSV report. The new format uses the categories: site data, base station data, mobile data and sector data.

Documentation is now available for both the CSV Link Reports I and II and the base station CSV report.

Route Finder

Preliminary changes made to the metrics used to measure the quality of link for the various design criteria. Path length is included in all metrics. Further changes are expected.


Pathloss 5 - revision date June 6, 2013

GIS Section

New Zealand Transvers Mercator projection has been added

A utility is now availabe to use Australian 1 second SRTM data. Contact CTE for details.

Calculation options

Space diversity improvement factor An option has been added for Vigants-Avait

A new CSV link report has been added. The old version can still be used. A base station CSV report has been added.


Pathloss 5 - revision date April 23, 2013

Drawing Fresnel zones directed at the reflection point was not always available when a plane was defined.

The antenna 3 dB beamwidths were not always transferred to the Multipath - Reflections design section

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 16, 2013

Operations - Convert .pl4 to .pl5: Corrected bug that could prevent the profile from transferring to the resulting .pl5 files.


Pathloss 5 - revision date April 2, 2013

Obstruction fading on very short paths or paths with excess clearance could cause the program to hang.

Space - frequency diversity improvement factors did not print on CSV reports. An option has been added to the "Transmission report formats" for this purpose. Note that the option will appear for the transmission detail, summary and csv reports; however, it only operates on the CSV report. The diversity parameters are always printed on the transmission summary and detail report.

The option to use frequency diversity when multiple channels assignments exist is now accessible in the calculations options section. Previously this option could only be set on a file by file basis in the Transmission analysis section.

Negative transmit power dBW values in TAFL files contain one of more spaces between the negative sign and the actual value { - 7.5). This resulted in higher power in the ODBC database.


Pathloss 5 - revision date March 25, 2013

Importing frequency data into the ODBC database (TAFL file)duplicate call signs could occur when importing TAFL files

The case detail reports showed the same longitude for the TX and RX sites

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 18, 2013

Local and area studies

A random instability in local and area studies calculations which produced a solid high signal coverage has been corrected.

Antenna data entry form

The view antenna data operation did not show the diversity antenna data

CSV link report

delimiters other than a comma did not work. Some fields had a hard coded comma.

Automatic link design

When the space diversity optimization procedure was used, the finalize links step did not correctly implement the space diversity configuration.

Create point to multipoint links

If the base station antenna downtilt had bee specified, the value was transferred to the pl5 files as a negative number

Text file import

The text file import did not correctly handle text files created in UNIX or Linux This affected the line number that an error would report and conversion of antenna data files in the dat format.

Adaptive modulation operation

The transmit power of the individual modulation states could not be changed in the ANSI mode. The adaptive modulation warning message (required payload is less than 99.95% availability) could produce false warnings.

Network display

When the display extents were set using the User defined extents option, the geographic grid was not correctly centered on the user extents

HAAT (height above average terrain)

This parameter is required on some FCC licensing. The units are only in meters. The Site data entry form incorrectly showed the units as feet when the Miles - Feet measurement option was in effect


Pathloss 5 - revision date February 18, 2013

Fixed antenna .dat file handling.

Fixed string_list error line number.


Pathloss 5 - revision date February 1, 2013

Shapefile update to handle POINT and POINTZ

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 18, 2013

An adaptive modulation warning message is issued in the ANSI mode if the 2 way availability for the modulation state corresponding to the minimum FCC payload required is less than 99.95%. Documentation is available at http://www.pathloss.com/p5/docs/pl5_admod.pdf

PL50 Link

Site datum and the projection data is both now saved in the pl5 file.

Multipath-Reflections

The space diversity planning section has been revised to correctly return to the normal calculation mode.

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 9, 2013

Added provision for Pathloss option files to be saved in the program directory. This may be necessary for some Windows Vista/7 configurations.

When adding SRTM data, the user was presented with a datum caution message for every file. Now only one message per batch is shown.

Update to Network toolbar.

Minor bug fixes regarding saving options to .ini files.


Pathloss 5 - revision date December 7, 2012

GIS Configuration

The System 1992/19 projection for Poland has been added. This is located under the European projections.

A geographic grid centered north and south on the equator could cause the network display to fail.

Cvt24_8.exe

This utility program now re-samples Tiff image files. Using a 50% reduction and conversion to a paletted image, a 200 Mbyte file can be reduced to 17 Mbytes. Several sampling algorithms are provided which effectively produce the same results.

Manual entry of adaptive modulation data

The following problems could occur in adaptive modulation radios which do not have a radio data file:

  • the RX threshold and maximum receive signal values could be interchanged
  • the maximum receive signal was not transferred from a lookup table

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 26, 2012

Optimization without radio data files did not transfer the TX power to the link

Link design rules

The following options are available in the Vigants-Barnett reliability method in the link design rules:

  • Automatically determine the Climatic factor - calculate terrain roughness and C Factor
  • Automatically determine the C factor

The following options have been added:

  • Specify the Climatic factor - calculate terrain roughness and the C factor
  • Specify the C factor directly
  • Automatically determine the Dispersive fade occurrence factor
  • Specify the Dispersive fade occurrence factor

Terrain Data

south African .ort files can now be converted and used with variable standard meridian.

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 13, 2012

Interference calculations on networks which include rectangular passive repeaters has been revised.

The antenna structure record (ASR) did not print on the Transmission summary detail or CSV reports. This was a side effect of the addition of height above average terrain in a previous build

Operations - Frequency Assignments

The high - low assignment correctly ignores passive repeaters.

Automated design using Adaptive modulation radios

The color coding on the automated design displays showed the results for the lowest modulation level instead of the reference modulation level.

Reflective plane definition

If the site 2 antenna height was at the minimum antenna height, the program could crash under some conditions.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 30, 2012

Corrected bug in Edit-Modify Links Operation. If a pl5 profile had been reversed when imported in to the network, running Edit modify on this link would result in a loss of synchronization between the pl5 file and the gr5 file.

This would manifest in the "Pathloss File Data Discrepancies" dialog. All the site parameters will be swaped. To correct this error, it is necessary to delete the link in the network display (do not delete the file) and then re-import the pl5 file again from the Site List.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 29, 2012

PTMP link design

Clicking on a point to multipoint link without an existing file association will automatically design the link using the base station equipment specifications. If the terrain database is configured, the profile will also be automatically generated.

Frequency assignments

Operations - Frequency assignments has a new option that will set the design frequency to the average frequency in the channel table. The design polarization will be set to the channel table polarization table for a single channel assignment or to the highest polarization usage for multiple channels. The default polarization is vertical.

When the channel table is edited in the Transmission analysis design section, a prompt is issued to update the design frequency and polarization using the above criteria.

Text import

Tower type import now accepts the tower type names (As they appear in the CSV report)

GIS datum selection

Changing only the datum in the PL50 link program did not save the changes in the associated pl5 file.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 24, 2012

PTMP links created or modified using the automated link design features

If discrete channel assignments have been entered in the base station sectors, PTMP links created using the automated design features will set the design frequency to the average of the mobile and base station sector transmit frequencies. The design polarization will also be set to the sector polarization.

Link files which were exported in pl4 format could not be changed between microwave and VHF-UHF applications or vice versa in the version 4 Pathloss program.

Setting the local study extents resulted in an opaque circle if the Show local study extents option was not checked

Passive repeaters using back to back antennas

The passive repeater report had several lines out of sequence

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 12, 2012

4 Band GeoTIFF files (National Map Viewer Orthoimagry) can now be used.

Fixed bug which could cause a crash when closing the Projection parameters dialog from within the DEM text import dialog.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 1, 2012

AntRad

The conversion from version 4 ASCII raf files to version 5 ASCII raf files did not allow the conversion to use separate directories for the version 4 and 5 files.

Height above average terrain (HAAT)

HAAT is now a site data parameter. This is an effective HAAT using the average value determined from a user specified path length, number of points and number of uniformly spaced radial profile.

The calculation is carried out in any of the design sections. Click on the site name on the status bar to access the site data entry form and the click the blue arrow on the HAAT data line to carry out the calculation.

Note that the HAAT definition does NOT include the antenna height. It is defined as the site ground elevation minus the average elevation.


Empirical studies

All calculations are based on the per radial height above average terrain.

Link text import

The design polarization will use the channel polarization if this is unique; otherwise, the default polarization will be used.

GIS Configuration

DEM files obtained from EarthExplorer.USGS.gov which used different cell sizes in the north-south and east-west directions at latitudes above 50 degrees (e.g 3 arc seconds NS and 6 arc seconds EW) did not correctly set the edges in the GIS file index


Area studies

Clicking cancel on a base station edit could invalidate an area study.


Pathloss 5 - revision date September 17, 2012

Added option to hide the local study radius. Configure - Options - Network display options - Axis-mapgrid - Show local study extents.

Adaptive modulation radio data files with 9 or 10 modulation states could cause a program instability in local and area study calculations. If the problem persists, it will be necessary to erase the following line in the windows PL50.INI file.

CLRMP_SCHEME_DATARATE_RSS_00=12,default.......

This line is in the [COLOR_RAMP_SCHEMES] section

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 6, 2012

SDH radio calculations (SES, unavailability, SESR and BBER) using space diversity could result in a program crash.

Rain Calculations

The options for the specific regression coefficients for ITU-R P.838-1 or -3 were not saved.

The ITU-R P.530-8/13 rain algorithm uses different equations for latitudes above and below 30 degrees. The transition between regions can result in a significant discontinuities.

ITU-R P.530-14 is now available with a new algorithm which does not depend on latitude. The implementation in the Pathloss program does NOT follow the ITU documentation for the effective path length calculation.

  • The distance factor r is calculated (r < 2.5)
  • Effective path length = actual path length x r (ITU)
  • Effective path length = actual path length / r (Pathloss)

This change was made to provide a reasonable agreement between the results of the 530-8/13 algorithm at latitudes greater than 30 degrees.

At latitudes below 30 degrees, there are significant difference between 530-8/13 and 530-14

The rain calculation now includes three options for the ITU rain algorithm

  1. ITU-R P.530-7 - this is the same as ITU-R P.530-8/13 for latitudes above 30 degrees
  2. ITU-R P.530-8/13 this uses different algorisms above and below 30 degrees latitude
  3. ITU-R P.530-14

Land mobile location variability

Terrain classifications for bare trees, evergreen deciduous and rain forest were not included in the location variability calculation

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 10, 2012

NLCD 2001 /2006 Clutter

A new option has been added to the NLCD 2001 /2006 clutter model for the Hawaiian islands. Each of the 3 NLCD clutter models (CONNUS, Alaska and Hawaii) use an Albers equal area conic projection with different parameters.

Therefore in the GIS clutter configuration, only one type can exist in the file index. Separate GIS configuration files (p5g) must be used for the CONNUS, Alaska and Hawaiian clutter categories.

Maximum EIRP

In the frequency range from 5725.0 to 5875.0 the maximum ERIP was limited to 36 dBW. This figure was applicable for point to mulitpoint systems. For point to point radios the limit is now 53 dBW.

Example file directories

The example network files have been changed to refer to the current default installation directory c:\plw50 from the older c:\program_files\pathloss 50.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 25, 2012

AntRad

Loading a version 4 ASCII (raf) file could lead to a corrupted capacity entry if the value did not exist in the file.

Saving a version 4 ASCII (raf) file could result in a corrupted frequency stability (ppm) if the value did not exist in file.

Error handling

The Yes to All option has been added to error messages in an interference calculation when the user is prompted to continue the operation when an error occurs.

This has also been added to the convert pl4 files to pl5.

Interference Calculations involving adaptive modulation radios

If a specific TX emission or RX selectivity curve is not available for the reference modulation state, the standard microwave TX emission or RX selectivity curves will be used.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 23, 2012

The elevation field and easting/northing in the site list table did not allow a zero or a negative value to be entered.

Older adaptive modulation pl5 files which were created before the recent changes to adaptive modulation did not load correctly

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 18, 2012

PTMP links from base station. Adaptive modulation details are now displayed. It is not possible to select the modulation states as is the case in point to point links.

Interference calculations using version 4 pl4 files which contained a passive repeater could cause a program crash.

Edit modify links - If tx lines are included in the scope of the design and and the TX line length is not included, the TX Line loss will be removed.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 12, 2012

Adaptive Modulation

Additional changes to the display and and reports.

Adding an adaptive modulation from from a lookup table follows the same procedure as adding the file from the radio file index.

Transmission analysis

The results display in the transmission analysis design section was corrupted for adaptive modulation applications


Interference calculations

Interference calculations on a point to multipoint network would generate invalid interference cases between links in the same sector.

The Hi-Lo violation report can now be generated when no interference cases have been calculated

The fade correlation display graphically shows the interference path with an curved line and arrow. On networks which cover a small area in the order of several kilometers, the path was off the display.


Create PTMP links

This operation did not add the correct sector number to the pl5 file. In an interference calculation this led to invalid interference cases


Antenna data files

The maximum size of an antenna data file is 47 characters. Antenna file names over 40 characters could cause a program crash in the Antenna data viewer.


ANT_RAD Version 4 radio data files

Clicking the Save mrs file (binary) menu item multiple times in succession would corrupt the mrs file.

Pathloss 5 - revision date June 21, 2012

NOTE

FILES CREATED WITH THIS PROGRAM BUILD CANNOT BE READ WITH PREVIOUS BUILDS. THE TRANSMITTER DATA WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE


The Composite Reports now includes an option to print the profile in either landscape or portrait orientation.

Major revisions to Adaptive modulation specifications and operation. Refer to data_files.pdf in the DOC folder in the Pathloss program folder.

Automatic frequency design operation reworked. Assignments can now add ATPC from radio file or user specified value.

Single site interference analysis added to the program. Right click on a site legend after performing interference calculation to access this feature.

Link CSV report did handle thematics correctly.

Interference calculations with passive repeaters has been corrected.

The High Low Violation report can be printed if there are no interference cases

On microwave radio data file imports, the default BER has been changed back to the 10-6 value

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 4, 2012

Corrected a bug in automatic frequency assignment feature, which could incorrectly assign frequencies after changing the working group.

Minor improvements to the CSV Link report.

Area study dialog - Propagation parameters: the location variability was not being calculated properly. This could lead to corrupted CtoI coverage plots.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 28, 2012

Area study dialog - Propagation parameters: the location variability was not being calculated properly. This could lead to corrupted CtoI coverage plots.

Frequency assignment - In some cases if a profile has been reversed, the Hi-Lo channels could be applied to the wrong sides of the link.

Reflective plane analysis - when using the diversity planning feature, the disabled edit box will now show the height of the TX antenna. The active edit box will show the height of the diversity receive antenna.

A bug in the Auto link design dialogs regarding the Availability and Unavailability rejection criteria has been fixed.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 8, 2012

Bug fixes regarding CSV Link report and Auto design operations.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 7, 2012

Export CSV file

The link and site thematic settings can be exported. This includes site type and status, link type and status and the LOS status. These are exported as integers in the range 0 to 8 and and a description corresponding to the thematic settings in the Network display.

Note that thematics are not exported with transmission detail or summary reports.

BIL projected DEM index text import

A UTM zone column assignment if the DEM is set to a variable zone projection.

Interference Calculations

Some cases of older version 4 radio data files with incorrectly formatted transmitter spectrum curves have been encountered. When these files were used to calculate filter improvement by integrating the TX emission into a receiver selectivity curve, the resulting filter improvement was negligible

Dispersive fade margin and equipment signature in adaptive modulation radios These parameters were not used in the overall availability calculations

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 23, 2012

On composite reports the path profile has been rotated to a landscape format.

A 36 dBi EIRP limit has been added for the ISM bands 902 to 928, 2400 to 2483.5 and þ5725 to 5875 MHz

Operations carried out in the network display while a link was open in the PL50L Link Design window could cause the frequency and other options of the PL50L link to change. These operations included the Import Pathloss data files and the automated design operations.

The fix allows you to import Pathloss files while a link design window is open. The automated design operations now demand that an existing PL50L link design window must be closed.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 15, 2012

Report printing revisions will be carried out over the next several months. The present build allows a selected area of the network display to printed. The direct to printer option now includes scale printing on one or more pages.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 9, 2012

Important notice for Pathloss 5 users

License server IP address changed, Versions of Pathloss 5 earlier than this will not be able to use the online activation features.

Vector .map files containing text and point format data can now be loaded and displayed. Line colors included in vector .map files are now displayed.

All extents, layers and transparancy settings are now saved and loaded with the network file.

Reflective plane analysis window could display anomalous values in the disabled edit controls when using the space diversity planning options

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 23, 2012

Minor bug fixes.

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 19, 2012

On adaptive modulation systems using the dispersive fade margin values, the dispersive fade occurrence factor was not available in the path parameters data entry form.

Terrain roughness - Vigants Barnett

The terrain roughness calculation methods are now available in the calculation options (default - design rules and pl5 files). The specific options are Reference - either sea level or a least squares fit to the terrain. This applies to both the automatic and user defined end point calculations. Terrain extents - The automatic calculation first determined the extent of the terrain which in intervisible to both antennas. If this extent is less than 50% of the profile, the central 80% of the profile is used. An option has been added to only use the central 80%.

Interference calculations

A high low violation report could not be printed if there were no interference cases. This restriction has been removed.

The update threshold degradation in pl5 files did not consider interference cases which had been set to "ignored" in the case detail report.

Link labels

The labels on north south links could be reversed under some conditions.

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 4, 2012

Rain attenuation at very high frequencies (75,000 MHz) - Crane model The algorithm did not extrapolate the rain curve if the lowest rain rate in the file produced an attenuation greater than the fade margin.

Pathloss 5 - revision date December 16, 2011

Minor corrections made to MapInfo vector tab files loading and site - links exports to MapInfo.

Diffraction design section

A variable parameter calculation on certain paths could place the diffraction module in to an unstable state.

PL5 file names generated automatically from the site names could sometimes fail if the site name contained backslashes.

Interference calculations file save and load could fail under some circumstances.


Pathloss 5 - revision date November 17, 2011

Diffraction Module: Running a variable calculation on certain paths could place the diffraction module in to an unstable state.

File names generated automatically from site names could sometimes fail if the site name contained backslashes.

Fixed bug that would cause interference calculations loaded from a file to become corrupted.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 21, 2011

The frequency diversity improvement factor and channel separation were not shown in reports unless space diversity was also used.

Tower height with app did did not change when the units were switched between metric and imperial.

Area roughness was being converted under some conditions when the units were switched between metric and imperial. This affects the ITU-530-9/12 and the ITU-530-13 algorithms. Area roughness is only expressed in meters.

Rejection criteria in the automatic link design operations could vanish after entering then exiting the Link design rules section.

Path profile reports

The profile report will now show the fixed height under the following conditions :

  • The Use clearance criteria option must be checked.
  • There is only one clearance criteria ( the second clearance criteria must be blank)

The fixed height is drawn as a dashed line using the calculation line color and line width.

The fixed height is drawn from the profile with the earth radius factor. If there are any trees on the path, they will be drawn on the profile.

In the antenna heights design section, the fixed height is added to the profile with the earth radius factor and any trees are on top of this.

Ant-Rad

Receive filter loss has been added to the space diversity ACU.

In the ACU section, the antenna types could not be set in the dropdown lists in the last three ACU definitions

Improved copy and paste operations have been implemented.

Importing radio curves from a text file would not save unless one of data entries was edited.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 6, 2011

Print profile

Fixed height clearance criteria was not being displayed.

Antrad

Fixed bugs which would drop radio curves if they were imported from text files.

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 29, 2011

The transmission detail and transmission summary reports would crash for point to mulitpoint links when the Write TX channel assignments were used.

A scale has been added to the Network display. This is an option set under Configure - Options - Network Display Options - Axis / map grid.

Assigned antenna heights

Assigned antenna heights are now used in the Edit-Modify Links operation.

GIS Configuration - BIL projected DEM

An option has been added to import version 4 index files of the type ody_xxx.dat. The user must set the projection.

Transmission analysis summary and detail reports

An option has been provided to print the transmission analysis summary and detail reports in either the table style as in Version 4 or in the columnar format.

This option is set under the Configure - Options - Program options - Report layouts menu item. This option is available for microwave and land mobile applications and for adaptive modulation applications using the total time below level for rain and multipath fades.

Note that for adaptive modulation applications using the data throughput probability, the table style format is always used.

Program activation

An option is provided to re-activate the program when using a floating lock and the "No licenses available" error is issued.

Performance reports

In the G826 option the headers SESR, BBER and ERR were out of order in the performance report.

Grid Float Terrain data

Fixed a bug which caused the north edge to be set incorrectly when using header files of a certain format.

Callsign has been added to the csv reports produced by the automatic designer modules. (Create links, design links, edit-modify links.)

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 9, 2011

The radio data file format has been modified to include the following parameters in each modulation state for adaptive modulation radios:

  • dispersive fade margin
  • equipment signature
  • maximum receive signal

The August 9 ant_rad utility is required to produce the radio files with these extensions.

The ITU quad diversity method using 4 receivers has been implemented.

Fixed serious bug in site text import routine that detected sites within .1 degree of each other as being the same site.

Modified report windows so that a new panel is always shown in the taskbar.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 7, 2011

Site text import now allows you to 're-import' on top of an existing network for the purpose of updating some site information. Matching sites are detected based on Callsign and Coordinates. When a match is detected, the user is given the option to update the existing site, add the new site (possibly overlapping), or skip over importing that site.

The AntRad utility now supports Pathloss 4 Radio Data files.

Pathloss 5 - revision date June 16, 2011

Minor bug fixes.

Pathloss 5 - revision date June 2, 2011

Fixed bug that could cause reflective plane analysis to display in black and white on some systems.

GIS system now supports world files for backdrop imagery geographic information

The ANT_RAD.EXE program was revised to correct a potential problem in normalizing the transmission spectrum.

Pathloss 5 - revision date May 27, 2011

Activation key codes can now be obtained via a HTML web interface. The activation and deactivation dialog boxes have been updated with instructions on how to use this feature.

Fixed bug that prevented color coded design links from being displayed when using Edit-Modify links.

Pathloss 5 - revision date May 17, 2011

Bug that caused some local studies to not export properly to Google earth has been fixed.

Pathloss 5 - revision date May 12, 2011

NLCD files were missing from the update. This prevented Pathloss from saving or loading GIS files containing a NLCD 2001 configuration.

Fixed program crash when using stand-alone group visability dialog box. Updated support for backdrop images from the USGS Seamless Server.

Pathloss 5 - revision date May 10, 2011

A description of all clutter revisions made in this program build is available in the file clutter.pdf

Fixed bug introduced with the new clutter categories that could cause GIS files to save incorrectly or not save at all.

Group Manager allows you to choose "Sites with links" or "sites without links" in the "Add from source" drop down list in group manager.

Additional error handling add to the constant gradient trace for non line of sight paths and site 2 antenna height ranges which do not generate a minimum number of rays.

Fixed a bug that would report small values for KQ Factor as 0. Also fixed bug preventing KQ Factor from being accepted in to the reliability portion of the design rules.

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 27, 2011

Frequency and path length information is exported to google earth

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 20, 2011

Create point to point links

The progress display now shows the number of links and the remaining time to complete the operation.

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 12, 2011

Site Names now displayed on internal 3D Viewer.

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 8, 2011

Minor bug fix for ITU 530-13.

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 6, 2011

Group manager no longer repositions the display during use.

Updated Transmission Analysis display for adaptive modulation radios.

New report format for adaptive modulation radios implemented.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 22, 2011

Transmission detail and summary reports format modified.

Transmission analysis display modified.

User interface update allowing dropdown lists to be opened with the keyboard in worksheets.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 10, 2011

CSV reports have been modified to eliminate column synchronization problems.

Google earth displays modified to show the site marker at the tower height.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 24, 2011

The interference error log on Vista and Windows 7 was virtualized and could not be directly read.

Emission designator did not transfer from the radio data file to the radio lookup table.

The view radio data from with the radio lookup table has been added

Land mobile CSV reports did not correctly write the calculations

Mark links and find links have been added to the link list.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 16, 2011

This build includes major program revisions and additions including the ODBC interface. The documentation for the network display has been completely revised and expanded. This is available in both compiled HTML and PDF formats. Example files are available for the automated link design operations and local studies.

A new floating lock licensing option has been added to allow users to share a program more effectively. It is now possible to have multiple programs with different options all under the same serial numbers. A user can view the current usage status or these programs.

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 11, 2011

Clutter loss using a description only type data base (NLCD, GLCC) In local and area studies, the clutter loss at the remote site is calculated as follows:

A 200 meter exclusion zone is setup at the remote. The clutter heights on last 200 meters of the path profile are set to zero. The diffraction loss is calculated due terrain and clutter on this profile. The clutter loss in the immediate vicinity of the remote, is interpolated from Clutter loss definition table at the design frequency for the specific clutter type.

These losses appear to be excessive especially at the higher frequencies. As a result this procedure is now only applied if the remote antenna height is less than the clutter height. In addition the loss is scaled from the the full value for an antenna height equal to one half of the clutter height and zero when the antenna height is equal to the clutter height.

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 4, 2011

Summary of changes made in the interference calculations using TX emission (measured or masks) and RX selectivity curves (measured or masks)

The first change came in the August 26, 2010 build to handle a very narrow band interfering signals into a very wide band receiver. The numerical integration did not adequately detect the interference in the receive passband.

The second change occurred in the November 19, 2010 build to deal with RX selectivity data which covered a frequency range of +- 2000 MHz with 10 data points. In this case, an interpolation algorithm failed. A side effect of the changes in this build was a failure to correctly read ToI or IRF curves. This was corrected in the December 10, 2010 build.

As a result of these changes, special software was developed to test different radio data files against each other. The tests shown a discrepancy between the results using TX emission masks and measured data. This has been corrected in the present build.

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 12, 2010

Fixed another bug preventing clutter from being considered in area studies under certain conditions.

Fixed bug which prevented the profile from updating when individual clutter heights were edited at specific points.

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 9, 2010

Certain projection combination would prevent clutter from being considered in local and area studies.

Diffraction variable, raytrace variable, and reflective plane analysis windows could lose the control panel at the bottom. The bottom panel is now static and cannot be lost.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 28, 2010

Changes to the network back-end dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes to add large numbers of links to the network as a batch. This affects importing links from pl5 data files, importing link text files, and creating links using the automatic designer.

Deleting multiple links from the link list was slow on very large networks. This has been corrected.

Fixed small error reporting bug in auto link designers.

"Yes to all" button added for overwrite confirmation when finalizing links from any of the the auto link designers.

When a clutter entry was deleted by entering a 0 in the height column, the clutter was not correctly deleted.

To delete multiple clutter points, hilite the points by clicking in the leftmost column. Use shift and ctrl to create the selection. Then click F6 or Ctrl-Y. You have the option of deleting the points or just the clutter.

Mark site function in the site list will now cause the network display to center on the marked site(s) once you close the sitelist window.

Area studies can now be created with a maximum radius.

Area studies showing CtoI can now restrict which base stations are considered as carriers.

All Study displays can now be exported to vector formats (shapefile and mid/mif). Improved memory management in export routine.

Resolved bug which occasionally failed to set the correct delimiter on entry in to the text import dialog box.

Find function added to the site list.

Error handling on create p2p link design improved. Errors are compiled and shown in notepad at the conclusion of the operation rather than one at a time as they occur.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 5, 2010

Improvements to the area study back-end drastically reduces memory requirements for studies involving a large number of base stations. Area studies can now be created on geographic geo-referenced backdrops. Area studies can be exported to Google earth from geographic geo-referenced backdrops.

Fixed crash which would occur when exporting a network with a large number of links to Google earth.

In Development: An area study showing C to I or simulcast delay can not yet be exported to vector formats (shapefile, mid/mif)

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 20, 2010

Corrected bug which caused the minimum value of K to always be reported as 0.05

Program could hang on newer operating systems while defining a polygon for an area study. The problem was similar to an earlier bug involving click and drag operations. A minor change to how a polygon is defined has removed the bug.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 25, 2010

It was possible to perform an empirical study before setting the basestation and mobile antenna heights. Because these values are required for some studies the study data could become corrupted leading to display problems.

An Interference calculation using the auto OHloss calculation option would crash if there were any errors in profile generation.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 19, 2010

The pl50 program would crash upon shutdown if the last site edited from the edit site dialog contained a basestation.

The Local Study would not always use the secondary terrain database if the basestation was located within the primary database bounds but the radius extended in to the secondary.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 10, 2010

Area study

CtoI calculations in an area display analysis did not consider the antenna radiation pattern of the remote site.

ITU-530-12 - ITU-530-13

Switching between these two algorithms did not automatically recalculate the results.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 6, 2010

There is a new option in the local studies display criteria that applies to the Line of Sight display. Previously, in an area where two or more studies overlap, a cell was marked as visible if ANY base station had LOS to that cell. You can now choose to have cells in overlapping regions marked as visible only if EVERY base station has LOS to that cell.

Local studies using the LOS criteria were not exported properly to google earth using the single image option.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 26, 2010

Program stability issues

Certain mouse operations such as linking two sites together could cause the program to hang for no apparent reason. This behavior was rarely seen on Windows XP; however on Windows Vista and 7 the occurrence was more frequent. Note that this was not a crash but more of a "program not responding" issue. We believe that we have solved this problem in the current build.

Turing on or off individual local studies using the checkmark in the sitelist could lead to an incorrect display or program crash.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 20, 2010

The maximum receive signal was not loaded into the lookup table from the radio index. The maximum receive signnal was also not loaded in to the Link design design rules from the lookup table. Both these problems have been fixed.

Installation help has been added to the PL50 menu bar.

Selecting the last row in the site list could cause a crash with some operations. The last row can no longer be selected in any grid controls.

Crane rain data entry form

If the cancel button was clicked, the "Rain calculation" option was always set to off and the polarization was set to horizontal. The ITU rain data entry form operated correctly.

Radio and Antenna Index

The column sort order is retained for the session

Elevation Backdrop

Per pixel transparency has now been added to the elevation backdrop. This makes possible such effects as show only elevations in a certain range or one color elevation displays.

In some cases, if a list contained a very large number of items, the vertical scroll bar would malfunction when being dragged.

Local Studies

  • Fixed bug in which local studies with different cell sizes would not be properly displayed together.
  • Local Studies are now supported when using a geo-referenced backdrop with a geographic projection.
  • Similar updates to area studies coming soon.

Pathloss 5 - revision date June 29, 2010

Studies

Area studies could crash for the C/I display criteria for some polygon shapes.

Error handling in both area and local studies for missing files could cause a program crash.

When both an area study and a local study were displayed using the same criteria, changing the colors and ranges for one study did not automatically update the other study

Radio Lookup Tables

When the radio index was used to populate the radio lookup table, the dispersive fade margin was not added.

Radio and Antenna Index

Both the hi frequency and the low frequency were required for the filter to operate correctly.

Pathloss 5 - revision date June 8, 2010

When a Pathloss data file which includes a passive repeater was loaded, the end site azimuths were recalculated incorrectly.

Pathloss 5 - revision date May 12, 2010

Improvements to local study memory management for very large studies.

ITU 530-13 mutipath fade algorithm added.

Pathloss 5 - revision date May 4, 2010

Path inclination was not automatically updated for antenna height changes in the antenna heights design section or the Configure - Antenna Heights menu selection.

The diffraction reports did not print when the diffraction calculations were carried out using any of the automatic design features.

Added functionality that allows multiple local studies to be defined as a batch. Selecting the menu item Studies->Local Studies->Batch Define will bring up a dialog box to set the study parameters. You can use a selection or group to control the base stations for which the studies will be defined. Only fully defined base stations will be included in the operation, and existing local studies will not be affected. When the studies have been defined select menu item Studies->Local Studies->Batch Generate to generate all the studies. (This may take some time for large areas.)

CDED file index

Created an index from converted CDED files did not properly set the file directory.

Reflection Analysis - Space diversity planning

The space diversity planning is only applicable for the TRDR-TRDR antenna configuration and the earth radius factor variable parameter. The space diversity planning is not inhibited if these two conditions are not met.

KML export

Google Earth does not allow the character '&' to be used in a site name. This check has been implemented in this program build

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 27, 2010

Options have been rearranged in to 3 categories that better reflect their scope and usage.

  • Network Display Options control the appearance of the network in PL50.
  • Program Options are options that apply to the entire program (report formats for example) and are saved in the ini file.
  • Calculation options apply to a single link or design rule file depending on where the options are accessed from. A line in the options dialog states exactly how the options are being applied.

Links can be now be added to groups based on Application Type. Click on Configure - Group Manager and then select the Add on condition feature. Select the check box and set the application type in the drop down list. When you click the check box, all links of that type will be added to the group.

Thematic site and link status color will now override the site and link colors even if there is no thematic type defined.

Fixed bug that prevented clutter backdrop from displaying if the definition window was not opened. This applies when the definition is loaded automatically from .grc files.

Report file names are now initialized to null and must be provided by the user at the time they are saved.

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 13, 2010

The copy function has been updated to allow for the copying of study and elevation legends as well as high resolution backdrop images. The copy function can be accessed from the main menu under File->Print->Copy or from the toolbar icon. The dialog allows you to select which element you wish to copy to the clipboard as well as specify a resolution multiplier.

The resolution multiplier applies when you are copying a network display containing bitmap elements such as backdrop imagery and studies. It allows you to retain higher image resolution even if the image is zoomed out in the display. The higher the multiplier, the greater the image resolution.

Using these methods you can make consecutive pastes in to vector or word processing software to build a network picture with legends. Note that because the clipboard data includes vectors as well as raster information, the behavior when pasting in to image editing software may vary.

Network printing is still in development and more features will be added in future updates.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 24, 2010

Diffraction calculations

Corrected an error in the March 17 build which caused a program crash.

Network Display

The status bar now contains the measurement units (kilometers-meters) or (miles-feet). Click on this button to convert between the two systems

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 17, 2010

The Copy/Move network operation is now able to use groups and selections to limit which files will be copied. The network will still retain all the links but only the link files in the selection or group will be copied. Any link files that are not copied will no longer be referenced by the gr5 network.

GIS Configuration

Indexing for NLCD clutter can now be carried out for complete folders and sub folders. In the File index display, click Files - Import index - bil, hdr, blw folder- subfolder. Select the top folder containing these files to create the index.

Note that this procedure cannot differentiate between bil clutter files and bil dem files. Do not use this procedure if the folders contain both DEM and clutter files.

Elevation backdrops for transverse Mercator projections which included a latitude origin resulted in a distorted view. An example of this type of projection is the UK national grid.

Completed Local Studies are now saved to disk in a format that will allow faster loading.

Corrected a logic error that prevented the Secondary DEM from filling in any 'no data' patches left over from the primary DEM.

The active link (open in pl50l design window) is now highlighted in green on the network display.

Corrected bug causing variable zone projections with bounds to not display coordinates on the status bar or in Add Site dialog.

Can now access design modules via a menu in the link list.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 2, 2010

Antenna beamwidth - downtilt

The multipath - reflections design section uses the elevation antenna 3 dB beamwidth and the antenna mechanical downtilt parameters in the analysis. Previously, copies of these variables were initially taken from the transmission analysis section and were not updated. The values are now the same in both design sections.

Antenna orientation calculations

These calculations are now continuously updated for all data entries and changes.

CSV reports

The delimiter selection (comma, tab, semicolon or other) now works. The text qualifier now allows a delimiter in an expression.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 23, 2010

Create PTP/PTMP links - Design links - Edit modify links

The windows hierarchy in these functions could result in the current window being hidden.

Terrain data section

The survey angles function returns an error message if the cursor is on site 1 - the first point in the profile.

The single structure dialog warning message "Structure exists at this location" has been removed from the dialog. An error message will be generated if the user attempts to add a structure at a location where one already exists.

Multipath - Reflections

Under certain non line of sight conditions, the program would crash when the define plane function was called.

GIS configuration - Indexing NED bil files

This can now be carried out for complete folders and sub folders. In the File index display, click Files - Import index - bil, hdr, blw folder- subfolder. Select the top folder containing these files to create the index.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 8, 2010

Google Earth Export

Local and area studies are now reprojected from the network display projection to the Google Earth plat carree projection. This improves the positioning within Google Earth, especially for large areas.

Local and Area Studies

If the variables "show local study" or "show area study" are changed in the site list, the changes did not take effect until the local or area study was regenerated. In this program build the changes will take effect immediately when the site list is closed.

Interference case detail report

The delete case and delete subcase buttons in the case detail report would cause a crash whenever all subcases associated with a receiver were deleted

Radio Lookup table

The second time the radio lookup table was accessed, the radio data would not be added if the design section had changed between accesses.

Local studies did not export to Google Earth unless all options were selected

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 20, 2010

Diffraction

If the diffraction algorithm was set in the PL50L program options, the tool bar in the the diffraction section was not reset.

Switching diffraction algorithms in the diffraction section, did not completely reset the calculations resulting in some interaction between algorithms.

Fixed bug in ray trace and reference plane analysis which would not show colors when printed in a batch report.

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 13, 2010

Diffraction loss

Reflective plane definition for Longley and Rice algorithm revised for line of sight applications.

Interactions between the diffraction loss calculations carried out in the transmission analysis section and the diffraction section have been eliminated

Pathloss 5 - revision date January 4, 2010

Some stability problems have been corrected in the link text import. If a file could not be saved, an error report is written and displayed at the end of the import.

Reflection plane report crash.

Import text files

The settings and column definitions can be saved and loaded. This makes it possible to handle any number of column definition formats for a particular import.

Pathloss 5 - revision date December 23, 2009

New menu item Assign Thematics under the Operations menu in PL50 allows thematics (site Type, site Status, link type, link status and los status) to be assigned to a selection or group.

Exporting to Google Earth now allows the local studies to be exported as a single image rather than an image for each base station. This option is shown on the export dialog.

Exporting PL5 to PL4 was missing the traffic code. This has been fixed

Pathloss 5 - revision date December 17, 2009

Fixed bug which caused local studies to have erroneous loss if clutter files could not be found.

Fixed some minor visibility problems regarding local studies.

GIS configuration

If a vector file (MapInfo or Shapefile) with building elevations was entered in the vector tab file list, then the program would crash when the file list was opened and the vector file was not at the specified location.

Grid ASCII conversion

Improved error detection in grid ascii file

3D terrain view

The user interface has been redesigned.

Update pl5 files

This function in the site data list will set the profile end point elevations to the values specified in the site list.

Automatic OHLOSS calculations in an interference calculation

If the "Calculate OHLOSS automatically" option was checked in an interference calculation, the program calculated the OHLOSS for each case. If the addition of the OHLOSS resulted in an interfering signal less than the objective minus the margin, the interference case was discarded. In all other cases the reports showed the OHLOSS being included twice.

Radio and antenna lookup tables

For antenna, the model and gain are the minimum requirements For radio lookup tables, the model transmit power and receive sensitivity are the minimum requirements. Minor reformatting changes were carried out to these tables.

Import link text file

A csv file with more than 2048 characters per line would cause a program crash. Any line length can now be used.

Pathloss 5 - revision date December 02, 2009

Visibility of ungrouped sites and links is saved in the gr5 file.

Export to shapefile and mapinfo mid/mif now allows export of groups or selections. More information exported to shapefile and mapinfo mid/mif databases.

3D Display now only shows visible network.

Fixed error exporting studies to google earth from certain datums.

Refinements to google earth export: More information in description, links now shown above ground at antenna height.

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 25, 2009

Export to google earth now allows export of groups or selection.

Maximum receive signal exceeded has been added to the trasmission analysis warnings.

More information is exported to mapinfo mid/mif format.

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 17, 2009

Profile displays now show the arrow on top of any structure or clutter at the selected point.

The excess clearance display in the antenna heights design section showed the longitude hemisphere incorrectly.

Erroneous base station circulator branching loss values could be generated if the Cancel (red X) button was clicked in the antenna coupling unit data entry form.

Create P2P links. Joining a group (or selection) to all sites now works as it should. Previously, some links between group members were omitted.

Pathloss 5 - revision date November 10, 2009

Create P2P links

Joining a group (or selection) to all sites now works as it should. Previously, some links between group members were ommited.

Hot keys have been added to switch between the link design sections.

Manual site linking direction Manual links were created in west to east direction. Links which were exactly north - south were created in a south to north direction. Using this convention, all profile displays had the westerly site on the left side.

This has been changed so that the first site selected is always on left side of profile displays.

Link text file import If the design frequency is not available in the import, the average channel assignments are now used.

Print profile options

The print profile options were not saved on exiting the report printing dialog.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 20, 2009

Fixed crash involving Ohloss and Diffraction Loss Reports.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 15, 2009

GIS Configuration

ESRI header files used for indexing BIL files with out a corresponding prj file are now supported. The projection information is contained in the hdr file. The user must set the projection.

CSV Import

The duplicate column assignments error message now identifies the specific column numbers and in the case of the "Site text file" import, the field name is specified.

The link text import loads the antenna code if available.

Pathloss 5 - revision date October 5, 2009

Rain data files

City rain data files have been added to the program. These are non proprietary rain files for US and Canadian cities.

Provision has been made to use the Proprietary ATT radio data files; however these are not supplied with the program. These files must be located in the directory geo_data\rain\alu_rain.

Radio and Antenna Code Index

Improved functionality for the find control.

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 29, 2009

Link Text Import

Coordinates using separate columns for degrees, minutes and seconds were not importing correctly.

Station, owner and operator codes

These site specific parameters can be used for alternate data storage and status information. These parameters can be excluded from the network

  • pl5 file discrepancy checking. Click Configure - PL50 Program options
  • Network link data checks to set these options.

Link design rules

Field margin has been added to the link design rules. The data entry is in the reliability parameters section of the design rules dialog.

Radio and antenna code data entry.

These can now be entered directly and deleted in the respective data entry forms.

Tooltips have been added to the radio and antenna indexes.

Antenna clearance report

If the controlling clearance criteria included a fixed height, the clearance report did not included this fixed height.

GIS Configuration

If the vector tab included shapefile definitions, and the shapefiles were not present, the program could crash on startup.

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 24, 2009

Backdrops

The Import Index - Mapinfo tab file option now supports bmp, jpg, and png in addition to tif as image formats. One bit black and white tif files are now supported.

Link text file import

Multiple links between the same two sites can now be carried out in the link text file import

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 22, 2009

Vertical Mapper Clutter files (gcd files)

Clutter data in the MapInfo vertical mapper format may include a clutter definition table in the file. If this exists the data will be automatically entered into the clutter definition table.

Note that clutter elevations do not exist in this file format. All clutter elevations have been set to a default value of zero. It is the users responsibility to assign the clutter heights. The clutter cross reference categories have been set to an "open land" default value. For local and area studies, the user must assign the cross references

GIS Configuration

The Philippine reference system 1992 datum has been added. This is effectively the same definition as the existing Luzon datum, however the transformation to WGS84 utilizes the 7 parameter algorithm for the entire country, whereas the the Luzon definition uses a 3 parameter transformation and two regions (Philippines excluding Mindanao and Mindanao) The Philippine transverse mercator projection for the five zones has been added for this datum

The clutter definition table now shows the clutter elevations in the units currently selected (feet or meters). Previously units were always in meters

Interference case detail report

Headers in the performance degradation did not line up with the actual data.

PL50L Options

The automatic diffraction algorithm selection (Pathloss, Tirem or NSMA) was not included in the PL50L option settings

Obstruction Fading (transmission analysis section) The diffraction loss iterations could fail under certain conditions and return a critical value of K of 1.33. The results were completely unrealistic

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 15, 2009

Passive repeaters

Passive repeaters created in the network display had stability problems.

Vectors

Added support for displaying ESRI shapefiles of type SHPT_ARCZ and SHPT_POLYGONZ.

Backdrop Files

MapInfo tab files can be loaded directly in to the Backdrop index. This is a multiselect operation. If the list is empty, then the first file added sets the projection. All successive files must match this projection. If the index contains any entries, then the existing projection determines if the file can be accepted.

Update PL5 file in the network display only updated one site in a link if the YES button was clicked. The Yes to all button operated correctly.

GRIDASCII

Converting a GRIDASCII resulted in a "File format error" on UNIX files. The program incorrectly interpreted the 0xA end of line character.

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 8, 2009

Set GIS configuration The MapInfo derived projection could cause a program crash if it was manually selected from the projection drop down list.

The ERP values in watts and dBm were reversed in land mobile applications in the transmission analysis display.

Diffraction loss

The diffraction loss calculation failed on line of sight paths with more than 6 terrain incursions into the 60% Fresnel zone radius.

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 2, 2009

Vertical mapper grd DEM files using 16 bit integers were not correctly read.

Pathloss 5 - revision date September 1, 2009

Link text file import

If the design frequency is not specified, and channel frequency assignments are in the file, then the design frequency will be set to the average of the channel frequencies.

Define plane

The define plane caused a crash when switching between the manual and automatic generation methods

The network file consisted of two files with the suffixes gr5 and gr5ids. The gr5ids contains the site and link ids and is intended to be used on a shared file basis. The gr5ids file has been removed in this program build due to potential data synchronization problems.

Rain errors were reported even when the rain calculation was switched off.

The free space loss formula gave results which were 0.02 dB different than the version 4.0 results. This small difference created difficulties in comparing availability results which are formatted to five decimal places. This release changes the free space loss to the version 4 formula.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 26, 2009

Minor fixes to radio and antenna lookup tables.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 25, 2009

Pl50 Options

Site Attributes, Site Label, Link Attributes and Link Labels can now be applied to a group or selection.

Set GIS Configuration

The File index for NLCD2001 clutter did not show the clutter name on the caption

PL40 radome loss

When a pl4 file containing a valid antenna code was opened in the standalone PL50L application, the antenna data was reloaded. This caused the radome loss to reset.

Space diversity - IF combining - corrected.

Changed gr5 save routine to guard against header errors.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 17, 2009

Transmission summary report when invoked from the transmission analysis menu bar always showed the distance and elevation in Miles / feet

Network to PL5 discrepancy dialog. Direction arrow buttons did not function.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 13, 2009

Network display - Map crossings

The map crossing function has been implemented. This is only valid for the default network projection. First set the axis to correspond to the desired maps (Click configure - PL50 options - axis-map grid). Then right click on the link and select map crossings. If the US 1:24,000 7.5 minute map scale has been selected, the report will show the actual map names.

Terrain data module

The reverse profile did not reverse the site names on the status bar.

Fixed google earth datum transformation.

Fixed minor bugs related to the no data entries in clutter databases.

Pathloss 5 - revision date August 6, 2009

Group manager

The visibility display rules have been changed to allow a group containing only links to be displayed. Some fixes have been made involving operations where some sites and links are hidden.

Antenna heights section

The graphical antenna heights display now does not show the minimum clearance criteria. Previously this was show as a modification to the Fresnel zone radius. Although the results were correct, this display was somewhat confusing.

The minimum clearance criteria is intended to provide clearance for close in obstructions where K and the Fresnel zone radius are very small and can lead to a grazing path. Note that when this is specified, the antenna heights cannot be less than this value.

Radio data entry form (Adaptive modulation)

Clicking the blue button to access the adaptive modulation table, could bring up a second instance of the table which could cause a program crash.

Update PL5 files has been added. This function is available on the site list menu bar. The procedure checks all associated pl5 files and compares the site data to the data in the site list. If there are any differences the user is prompted to modify the pl5 file. This is a one direction change - Network site data to pl5 file.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 31, 2009

NLCD2001 and NCLD2002 clutter data downloads in BIL format from the USGS site are now working. These files can be used with the July 31, 2009 program build.

NED and SRTM elevation data downloads in BIL format are now in a 32 bit floating point format. We believe that this is an error as the definition of the BIL format on the USGS site states that the elevations are in a signed 16 bit integer format. The new float files are twice the size of the integer files.

The July 31, 2009 program build will read the floating point files.

The Group manager operation has been revised so that links can exist in a group without the associated sites being in the group. This allows the user to create a group with links only or with sites only. Combinations of sites and links in a group are still possible. In this arrangement, links can now be hidden without hiding the sites.

Printing and copying the network display with backdrops produced black ares where the backdrop was missing.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 29, 2009

Site list does not reset display unless coordinates are changed.

Set GIS Configuration correctly recognizes when the projection of the display has changed.

Pl5 Link Files deleted by Pathloss are now sent to the recycle bin rather than being permanently deleted.

Reports

Fixed bugs causing columns to be out of sync and filenames to not be displayed in some cases.

Antenna Usage is shown next to the antenna model in the transmission detail and transmission summary reports.

Point to point link design

The antenna coupling unit (ACU) data entry form in the base station definition did not match up with the ACU data entry in the Link Design Rules. These are now exactly the same interface

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 24, 2009

The addition of new fields to site data caused a crash in the site data entry forms.

Fixed error in which a group could become corrupted when importing from site text files.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 22, 2009

Obstruction Fading

A preliminary implementation is available in the transmission analysis design section. Click Operations - Obstruction fading. The next program build will include the documentation and the obstruction fading will be incorporated into the reports

Local and area studies

The receive at base station option cause an error.

CSV link report

The antenna usage field has been added. This will only appear if the antenna model is checked.

Import text links

Quotation marks were not automatically removed.

A preliminary request for frequency coordination CSV report has been added. Click Operations - Frequency Coordination report. The report format may change based on discussions with Alcatel and Comsearch. The following fields have been added to the site data structure for this report.

  • Antenna registration number char[16]
  • Zip code char[16]
  • Tower height with Appurtenances

Under some circumstances - distance, azimuth and projected coordinates were not automatically calculated from the site coordinates.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 9, 2009

ASTER GeoTiff Data

Support for the ASTER geotiff terrain elevation data has been added. This is a one arc second data base with global coverage over the latitude range 83N to 83S. This has been implemented as a BIL geographic DEM.

Radio and Antenna Cross Reference

The radio and antenna cross reference in the link text file import has been implemented. Note that at this time there is no check on the code validity and the codes are not expanded to complete missing data entries.

Antenna lookup tables

The default antenna lookup table was not loaded on startup.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 3, 2009

Site text import

Site elevation values were corrupted in the import procedure.

Local studies

The climate region was was not being updated in both local and area studies. A continental temperate climate was used in all cases.

Network

The move site operation did not update the azimuths in any associated pl5 files. Move site can be potentially dangerous. Additional work is underway to advise users of the full impact of the site move operation.

Pathloss 5 - revision date July 2, 2009

The options dialog in the transmission analysis section was missing. This dialog allows the entry of water vapor density in microwave - adaptive modulation applications and the location selection for land mobile applications

Time variability was not being updated in both local and area studies. A constant time variability of 50% was being used.

Auto link design on PTMP links using all sites within a specified radius, did not consider the visibility state of the sites.

Pathloss 5 - revision date June 30, 2009

Group manager

The user interface for editing groups as a list has been completely revised. The group visibility interface has also been revised.

Adaptive modulation

The percent of time in mode is now show for the total annual throughput.

CSV Link Report

The options for Transmission detail and Transmission summary were reversed. Site coordinates were only exported in degrees minutes and seconds format. The decimal degree option now works.

Reflective plane definition

Continued resetting and redefining a reflective plane could cause a program crash.

Pathloss 5 - revision date June 22, 2009

Assigned antenna height

The import site text file (csv) now includes an assigned antenna height field. The value is not displayed in the site list display. Click Edit - Edit item to view all fields in the site list including the assigned antenna height. This field is used in the following auto-design operations: 

 create PTP links
 create PTMP links
 design links (PTP and PTMP)

The Link design rules includes the option "Use assigned antenna heights" in the Antenna heights - tx lines setting. When this option is checked, the assigned value for a site will be used in all links from that site. If there is no value for the assigned antenna height, the tower height will be used. If both the assigned antenna height and tower height are not available, the site will not be used in the design operation.

Use the "Clearance" display criteria to display the results of the design operation using the assigned antenna heights.

PL4 files can be exported using group or selection directly from the Network display.

The clearance criteria used in the link design rules were not saved once the session was closed.

Radio and antenna lookup tables

If the default lookup table file cannot be found, the program would crash. The antenna lookup table high and low frequency values did not sort correctly.

GIS setup

Clutter index for was not saved correctly under certain conditions.

Pathloss 5 - revision date June 15, 2009

Set GIS Configuration

The default directory specification has been changed from a single directory to individual file directories when importing an index.

Some procedures involving lookup tables and code indexes, could cause the data entry form to loose focus and go behind the network display.

Import link text file

This procedure has been revised to include 3 antennas and 12 TX channel entries. Still outstanding are the cross references between the radio and antenna codes in the csv file and the actual codes to be used.

Pathloss 5 - revision date May 26, 2009

The Design link function has been completely revised and divided into two functions. The Design links function only operates on links without a pl5 file association. The Edit-Modify links function only operates on links with an existing pl5 file association.

Network Operations

The following side effects introduced in the due to the May 19 build have been corrected The Performance function caused a program crash The Add site and Move site dialogs sizes were not usable

Rain calculations

The ITU-R P.837-5 rain data base has been added to the program. The original 837-3 has not been removed. It should be noted that the difference can be significant between the two data bases.

ATT rain data files for the United States are not distributed with the program. The directory geo_data\rain\rain_usa contains Canadian rain data files in the ATT file format. The file naming convention is CURVEXX.CSV where XX is a one or two digit number. If the USA files are located in this directory, then they will be automatically used for the Crane rain algorithm

Antenna Lookup Tables

Radome loss and antenna diameter have been added to the lookup table

Radio and antenna data lookup files could cause a program crash if an arbitrary file was loaded.

Ant_rad.exe - radio data files

If a binary radio data file was saved several times in a row, the calculated curves - TX emission mask, RX selectivity mask and the RX selectivity curver used in calculations would be duplicated.

Pathloss 5 - revision date May 19, 2009

Design Links - Network Display

This has been completely revised. The operation is similar to the Create PTP / PTMP links feature.

It is possible simply to view the key performance indicators (KPIs) of the network links using either the original design rules or the current design rules.

A group selection criteria is provided to move the links into different groups based on these KPIs.

Transmission line lengths on PTMP link designs have been corrected

Data integrity checks between PL5 files and the network display. When a pl5 file was saved, the network display data was automatically updated to the PL5 data. This has been changed. If differences between the two data sets are present, the user is prompted to select the correct data.

MapInfo grc files (one byte data files) were not read correctly. These files were being used as clutter data.

Pathloss 5 - revision date May 7, 2009

Create PTP and PTMP links

Clearance has been added as a rejection criteria. This is the clearance relative to the clearance criteria. A value of 0 means that the clearance criteria has been exactly met. A positive value is the excess clearance over the clearance criteria. A negative value is the additional clearance required to meet the clearance criteria.

A minimum and maximum value can be specified for each rejection criteria. In addition, the current link display can be saved to a group. This makes it possible to save the analysis into multiple groups. For example the group names could be as follows: 

 clearance OK
 clearance within 10 meters
 clearance over 10 meters

The links can be saved with the original color legend.

Point to point equipment parameters now used the same standard data entry forms used in the transmission analysis section and include both lookup tables and the radio - antenna indexes.

Automatic Link Design

Diffraction loss is calculated at three values of K (4/3, the minimum expected value of K and a K of infinity). The infinity value was used in the transmission analysis under the assumption that heavy multipath fading is coincident with high values of K.

In this program build, the 4/3 value is used. Future program builds will expand on this and provide the probability of obstruction fading.

Lookup tables

Various data entry and conversion problems with antenna and radio data lookup tables were corrected dbm to microvolt conversion on the land mobile radio data entry form did not operate.

Pathloss 5 - revision date April 22, 2009

Multipath - reflection

Variable parameters calculations using ray tracing did not correctly save in the pl5 file.

Variable parameters calculations using ray tracing on paths which were blocked at the lowest value of the earth radius factor K could cause a program crash.

Transmission analysis

The vertical angle and azimuth were expressed as degrees minutes and seconds in report. The vertical angles were reported as positive values. These are now expressed as decimal degrees with the correct sign

The report format options for microwave total time below level showed the annual rain unavailability and the total annual rain + multipath unavailability in expressed in seconds. The actual report expresses the value in minutes. This provides compatibility with ITU conventions of expressing unavailability in minutes.

Loading a radio data file could could change several of the calculations options. These changes have been inhibited for the time being. The radio data files contain calculation methods such as selective outage and performance calculations in accordance with G826. A future release will prompt the user to make these changes and the changes will be immediately reflected in the radio data entry form.

FCC EIRP warnings were based on dBm instead of dBW

Vectors

A side effect of continuing development on shapefile features resulted in program crash when using vector shapefiles

Network display link list

If the link list was closed with the last row selected, the program would crash

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 26, 2009

Site list

Corrections made to the import/export CSV files operations.

Corrections made to column sorting.

Automatic link design

Antenna height greater than the tower height link rejection criteria has been added.

Tower heights have been added to the CSV report.

Finalize links did not correctly limit antenna heights to the tower heights

Diffraction module

Under some circumstances Fresnel zones could not be displayed.

Reports

This section is now under revision. The version 4 print profile report has been added.

Pathloss 5 - revision date March 10, 2009

Radio lookup tables can load version 4 microwave (mrd) and VHF-UHF (vrd) lookup files.

CSV Link reports have been added. They can be found under the Operations menu in the network display. The report can be customized by clicking the 'Edit' button and selecting CSV Link report from the dropdown list in the report settings window. (More report settings are available in the tree list on the left.)

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 24, 2009

Radio lookup tables

This has been added as an option to using the radio code index. If a code exists in the table, the, lookup table functions the same as the radio code index.

Other fixes

Loading pl4 files which contained Fresnel references became corrupted when saved as PL5 files.

Interference calculations for base stations without associated links has been implemented.

Pathloss 5 - revision date February 12, 2009

Base station sector frequency assignments

The TX channel table and frequency plan files are now used for frequency assignments.

Point to multipoint design

The base antenna height is not considered in the rejection criteria.

Google Earth kml export

General improvements to the overall display. Local and area studies are now exported as separate entities for each signal level.

Other fixes

Metric conversion problems - (feet and miles only).

Error in transmission line unit loss in ptmp link design corrected.

Error in tower heights corrected.

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