How does MATLAB compute coverage of the antenna?

Hi, I am working on the coverage of the antenna beam by the "coverage" function in Antenna Toolbox for RF propogation. Basicallly, it shows the footprint of the beam on a terrain map with Site Viewer. The footprint is blocked at certain distances when the beam is directed to a mountain.However, I wonder whether it takes the elevation of tall buildings in downtown into consideration when it computes the coverage or not.

The coverage of an rectangular array antenna with 0 degree downtilt and a relative height of 5 meters and 24 meters are the same, while there are certain skyscrapers in radiated direction.

Answer 1

[Jacob Halbrooks]

The default terrain data that is used to generate coverage maps is derived from the USGS GMTED2010 data set, which includes the ground surface but does not include buildings or other artificial structures. As of R2019a, you can import terrain data for coverage maps from DTED-files using addCustomTerrain. If you could find a source of DTED-files that include building surfaces, you could import them for use with coverage maps. Otherwise there is not currently any support for including buildings data in coverage maps.

[Jacob Halbrooks]

Note that in R2019b there is also support for importing buildings from OpenStreetMap files. This can be done by specifying the OSM-file in the new Buildings property of siteviewer:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/antenna/ref/siteviewer.html

An example that uses this new feature along with new point-to-point ray tracing visualization features is here:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/antenna/examples/urban-channel-link-analysis-and-visualization-using-ray-tracing.html