Coverage Analysis with Open Source Tools

Part 1 - BTS Newsletter: May 2015

URLs referred to in the article:

NumPy:

http://www.numpy.org/

Matplotlib library:

http://www.matplotlib.org/

Simplekml:

https://code.google.com/p/simplekml/

Paper about using GRASS GIS for planning telecommunications networks:

http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2010/Corfu/COMMUNICATIONS/COMMUNICATIONS-19.pdf

Oracle VirtualBox:

https://www.virtualbox.org/

Ubuntu:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Kubuntu:

http://www.kubuntu.org/

Arch Linux:

https://www.archlinux.org/

Arch User Repository (AUR):

https://www.archlinux.org/

Article: "Most Consumer Friendly Linux Distribution"

http://www.linuxveda.com/2015/02/11/linus-torvalds-awarded-arch-linux-consumer-friendly-distribution/

Fedora:

https://getfedora.org/

openSUSE:

https://www.opensuse.org/en/

Distrowatch -- Listing and comparison of Linux Distributions:

http://distrowatch.com/

SPLAT! (RF Signal Propagation, Loss, And Terrain analysis tool):

http://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/splat.html

Notes on setting up Ubuntu 14.04 for coverage studies and analysis after installation

1) Update Ubuntu to latest version (Use Software Updater)

2) Open terminal:

sudo apt-get install python3-numpy

sudo apt-get install idle3

sudo apt-get install python3-matplotlib

sudo apt-get install python3-geopy

sudo apt-get install splat

3) Install updated version of splat (download from http://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/splat.html)

cd /usr/local/src

sudo mv ~/Downloads/splat-1.4.2.tar.bz2 .

sudo tar -jxvf splat-1.4.2.tar.bz2

cd splat-1.4.2

sudo apt-get install g++

sudo apt-get install libbz2-1.0

sudo apt-get install libbz2-dev

sudo apt-get install zlibc

sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev

sudo ./configure

4) Enter study size – Recommend: 4 x 4 degrees for 3 sec data and 3 x 3 degrees for 1-sec (HD)

5) Recommend renaming splat files in /usr/local/bin to include size, recompile for other sizes:

Example:

sudo mv splat splat4

sudo mv splat-hd splat3hd

6) To generate Google Earth maps, download simplekml-1.2.7.zip
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/simplekml/1.2.7#downloads

7) In a terminal:

cd ~/Downloads

unzip simplekml-1.2.7.zip

cd simplekml-1.2.7

python3 setup.py build

sudo python3 setup.py install

8) Install Google Earth: See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GoogleEarth

Questions, additions or comments?