I was looking for a free program to help me simulate Wi-Fi signal propagation for indoor environments. I wanted a program that could take a floor map and do some ray tracing or apply some known propagation model. I was disappointed when I couldn't find any open source software in that area. All the free programs I found were very naive and targeted radio hobbyists. On the other hand, I found a number of high quality commercial programs, fortunately, one of which had a free student edition. I compiled this list with the information I got:
1) RF-vu from iBwave with the RF-Propagation add-on.
2) PropMan from AWE Communications.
3) InterpretAir from Fluke Networks.
4) SignalPro from EDX with the Microcell/Indoor add-on (free evaluation version)
5) Radioplan from Actix. (student edition free to download)
I'd also like to mention these free tools, none of them support indoor propagation and I didn't try them myself, anyway they seemed good to me so I decided to include them here for completion.
1) Radio Mobile: the screen shots available at the website are interesting and it seems to have an active user base. They've created a Yahoo Group that currently has 5382 members. The group description points to that tutorial that looked good too.
2) SPLAT!: an open source RF Signal Propagation, Loss, And Terrain analysis tool for the spectrum between 20 MHz and 20 GHz. It may be redistributed and/or modified under the terms of GPLv2. It looks well made and documented. The website mentions interesting projects that used this tool.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Indoor RF Propagation Simulation Software
11 comments:
Thanks for this list. It's very useful when searching for such kind of specialized software!
Hi,
Just to comment on your post. You are right about iBwave offering an indoor propagation tool. It is called "Propagation Module".
However, if you look carefully, iBwave has renamed its products. For instance, RF-vu is now called "iBwave Design" and it is a software that allows to let you design and plan indoor wireless networks, while supporting 4G and all the newest technologies that supports Smartphone data usage.
You can also ask for a 30 day trial, if you take the demo.
salamo alekom,
i read ur article about rf-vu software and i was wondering if u have a trial version for rf-vu version 4.0 ,coz i believe that ibwave doesn't share trial licenses unless u r a customer.so i hope to recieve ur reply shortly and am very thankful for ur time
regards;
Mostafa
juventini1010@hotmail.com
Hi ,
I am in need of the sotwares like PropMan, RPS or InterpretAir to model my indoor channel propagation. Can u send me the software if u have it with you. It would be of great help to me.
My email id is celusddb@gmail.com
Thanking You
Diptanil_ddb
PhD student , TUD
You missed WirelesInsite and an open source GRASS-RaPlaT
hi!! do you have a software for planning the inddors wifi??
PyLayers looks promising: http://pylayers.github.io/pylayers/
Awesome article!
Can you please email the radioplan software, can not locate it
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