Antennas are not easy to manufacture, and their patterns are usually represented using 2x2D array. For example, the below represents a horizontal antenna pattern that contains 360 gain values which are stored by 36 (rows) times 10 (columns).
#HUBER+SUHNER AG XXXX / XXXX 0627/360/7/0/MIMO / File name:XXXX #XXXX / Version 1 Name = 1399.17.0229 Number of Points = 360 Start Ang. = 0 Range = 40.000000 Increment = 1.0 Orientation = Horizontal -3.89 -4.08 -4.27 -4.47 -4.66 -4.85 -5.05 -5.25 -5.44 -5.64 -5.84 -6.04 -6.24 -6.44 -6.64 -6.83 -7.03 -7.22 -7.42 -7.61 -7.81 -7.98 -8.16 -8.34 -8.51 -8.69 -8.82 -8.94 -9.07 -9.20 -9.32 -9.36 -9.40 -9.43 -9.47 -9.50 -9.43 -9.36 -9.29 -9.22 -9.15 -9.01 -8.87 -8.72 -8.58 -8.44 -8.28 -8.13 -7.97 -7.81 -7.66 -7.53 -7.39 -7.26 -7.13 -7.00 -6.92 -6.83 -6.75 -6.66 -6.58 -6.55 -6.52 -6.49 -6.46 -6.43 -6.45 -6.47 -6.50 -6.52 -6.54 -6.62 -6.70 -6.77 -6.85 -6.93 -7.06 -7.19 -7.32 -7.45 -7.58 -7.76 -7.94 -8.12 -8.30 -8.49 -8.72 -8.95 -9.18 -9.41 -9.64 -9.89 -10.14 -10.39 -10.64 -10.89 -11.08 -11.26 -11.45 -11.63 -11.82 -11.81 -11.79 -11.78 -11.77 -11.76 -11.53 -11.31 -11.09 -10.86 -10.64 -10.34 -10.04 -9.74 -9.44 -9.14 -8.88 -8.61 -8.35 -8.08 -7.82 -7.63 -7.44 -7.25 -7.06 -6.87 -6.77 -6.67 -6.56 -6.46 -6.36 -6.34 -6.32 -6.30 -6.28 -6.26 -6.31 -6.37 -6.42 -6.47 -6.53 -6.63 -6.73 -6.83 -6.94 -7.04 -7.14 -7.24 -7.34 -7.44 -7.54 -7.57 -7.59 -7.62 -7.64 -7.66 -7.56 -7.46 -7.36 -7.25 -7.15 -6.95 -6.75 -6.54 -6.34 -6.14 -5.91 -5.67 -5.44 -5.20 -4.97 -4.75 -4.53 -4.31 -4.09 -3.87 -3.68 -3.50 -3.31 -3.13 -2.94 -2.79 -2.65 -2.50 -2.35 -2.20 -2.09 -1.97 -1.86 -1.75 -1.63 -1.55 -1.46 -1.37 -1.29 -1.20 -1.14 -1.08 -1.01 -0.95 -0.89 -0.85 -0.81 -0.76 -0.72 -0.68 -0.66 -0.63 -0.61 -0.58 -0.56 -0.54 -0.53 -0.52 -0.51 -0.50 -0.51 -0.51 -0.51 -0.51 -0.51 -0.53 -0.54 -0.55 -0.56 -0.58 -0.60 -0.62 -0.64 -0.66 -0.68 -0.70 -0.73 -0.75 -0.78 -0.80 -0.83 -0.86 -0.89 -0.92 -0.95 -0.98 -1.01 -1.03 -1.06 -1.09 -1.12 -1.15 -1.18 -1.21 -1.24 -1.26 -1.29 -1.32 -1.35 -1.37 -1.40 -1.42 -1.44 -1.46 -1.49 -1.50 -1.52 -1.54 -1.55 -1.57 -1.57 -1.58 -1.58 -1.59 -1.59 -1.58 -1.58 -1.57 -1.56 -1.55 -1.53 -1.51 -1.48 -1.46 -1.43 -1.40 -1.36 -1.32 -1.28 -1.24 -1.19 -1.14 -1.09 -1.04 -0.99 -0.94 -0.89 -0.83 -0.78 -0.73 -0.67 -0.62 -0.57 -0.52 -0.47 -0.43 -0.38 -0.34 -0.30 -0.26 -0.22 -0.19 -0.16 -0.13 -0.10 -0.08 -0.06 -0.05 -0.03 -0.02 -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 -0.02 -0.04 -0.06 -0.07 -0.09 -0.13 -0.16 -0.20 -0.23 -0.27 -0.33 -0.39 -0.44 -0.50 -0.56 -0.64 -0.72 -0.81 -0.89 -0.97 -1.08 -1.19 -1.30 -1.41 -1.51 -1.65 -1.79 -1.92 -2.06 -2.19 -2.35 -2.51 -2.67 -2.83 -2.99 -3.17 -3.35 -3.53 -3.71
How to construct 3D Full Antenna Pattern from Both Horizontal and Vertical 1-D array?
You might need the interopolation methods, that allow you to construct an estimate of a full 3D pattern given 2x2D gain values. The industry uses 2x2D gain values to represent an antenna for simplicity.
directional-antenna-pattern-3d
Full 360 antenna gain matrix need to be applied to Path Loss, in order to compute the signal strength, for example:
where Pr and Pt are signal strength for receiver and transmitter respectively. The G is the antenna gains (for both transmitter and receiver), and the L denotes the path loss.
How to Extract Gain Values from Antenna Text File?
We want to merge two gain text files into one, something like this:
0 h1 v1 1 h2 v2 2 h3 v3 .. .. 359 h359 v359
The quickest way is to copy these 360 gain values for horizontal and vertical patterns respectively into spreadsheet e.g. Microsoft Excel. So how to extract 36×10 gain matrix into 360 gain values?
Let’s create a PHP script e.g. process_ant.php with the following content:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 | // https://propagationtools.com/wireless/how-to-process-the-2d-antenna-pattern-text-files-using-php-script/ if (count($argv) >= 1) { echo ("files missing"); die(); } function process_pat($filename) { $s = file_get_contents($filename); $array = preg_split('/\s*\R\s*/', trim($s), NULL, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY); $r = array(); foreach ($array as $line) { if ($line[0] == '#') continue; $tmp = explode(' ', $line); if (count($tmp) >= 2) { // if it looks like pattern values $r = array_merge($r, $tmp); } } return $r; } for ($i = 1; $i < count($argv); ++ $i) { $filename = $argv[$i]; if (!is_file($filename)) { echo "cannot open: $filename\n"; continue; } $r = process_pat($filename); if (count($r) == 0) continue; $s = ""; foreach ($r as $t) { $s .= "$t\r\n"; } file_put_contents($filename . ".txt", $s); echo "Saved: $filename\n"; } |
// https://propagationtools.com/wireless/how-to-process-the-2d-antenna-pattern-text-files-using-php-script/
if (count($argv) >= 1) {
echo ("files missing");
die();
}
function process_pat($filename) {
$s = file_get_contents($filename);
$array = preg_split('/\s*\R\s*/', trim($s), NULL, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
$r = array();
foreach ($array as $line) {
if ($line[0] == '#') continue;
$tmp = explode(' ', $line);
if (count($tmp) >= 2) { // if it looks like pattern values
$r = array_merge($r, $tmp);
}
}
return $r;
}
for ($i = 1; $i < count($argv); ++ $i) {
$filename = $argv[$i];
if (!is_file($filename)) {
echo "cannot open: $filename\n";
continue;
}
$r = process_pat($filename);
if (count($r) == 0) continue;
$s = "";
foreach ($r as $t) {
$s .= "$t\r\n";
}
file_put_contents($filename . ".txt", $s);
echo "Saved: $filename\n";
}This script converts antenna files to text files that contain 360 lines of values. For example,
1 | php process_ant.php sample.pat |
php process_ant.php sample.pat
That will read sample.pat and write to sample.pat.txt. You can loop folders recursively for all pattern files, for example (Windows Command Line Prompt):
FOR /F "usebackq delims==" %i IN (`dir /s /b *`) do php process_ant.php "%i"
For Linux shells, use this instead:
1 | find . -name \* -exec php process_ant.php {} \; |
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