Changes

There are a number of SBR simulation settings that can be accessed and changed from the SBR Ray Tracing Engine Settings Dialog. To open this dialog, click the button labeled {{key|Settings}} on the right side of the '''Select EngineSolver or Simulation Type''' drop-down list in the Run Dialog. EM.Terrano's SBR simulation engine allows you to separate the physical effects that are calculated during a ray tracing process. You can selectively enable or disable '''Reflection/Transmission''' and '''Edge Diffraction''' in the "Ray-Block Interactions" section of this dialog. By default, the ray reflection, and transmission and edge diffraction effects are enabled and the terrain diffraction effects are disabled. Separating these effects sometimes help you better analyze your propagation scene and understand the impact of various blocks in the scene.

EM.Terrano allows a finite number of ray bounces for each original ray emanating from a transmitter. This is very important in situations that may involve resonance effects where rays get trapped among multiple surfaces and may bounce back and forth indefinitely. This is set using the box labeled "'''Max No. Ray Bounces'''", which has a default value of 10. Note that the maximum number of ray bounces directly affects the computation time as well as the size of output simulation data files. This can become critical for indoor propagation scenes, where most of the rays undergo a large number of reflections. Two other parameters control the diffraction computations: '''Max Wedge Angle''' in degrees and '''Min Edge Length''' in project units. The maximum wedge angle is the angle between two conjoined facets that is considered to make them almost flat or coplanar with no diffraction effect. The default value of the maximum wedge angle is 170°. The minimum edge length is size of the common edge between two conjoined facets that is considered as a mesh artifact and not a real diffracting edge. The default value of the minimum edge length is 5 one project units.

As rays travel in the scene and bounce from surfaces, they lose their power, and their amplitudes gradually diminish. From a practical point of view, only rays that have power levels above the receiver sensitivity threshold can be effectively received. Therefore, all the rays whose power levels fall below a specified power threshold are discarded. The '''Ray Power Threshold''' is specified in dBm and has a default value of -100dBm150dBm. Keep in mind that the value of this threshold directly affects the accuracy of the simulation results as well as the size of the output data file.

You can also set the '''Ray Angular Resolution''' of the transmitter rays in degrees. By default, every transmitter emanates equi-angular ray tubes at a resolution of 1 degree. Lower angular resolutions larger than 1° speed up the SBR simulation significantly, but they may compromise the accuracy. Higher angular resolutions less than 1° increase the accuracy of the simulating results, but they also increase the computation time. The SBR Engine Settings dialog also shows displays the required '''Minimum Angular Resolution''' in degrees in a greyedgrayed-out box. This number is calculated based on the overall extents of your computational domain as well as the SBR mesh resolution. To see this value, you have to generate the SBR mesh first. Keeping the angular resolution of your project above this threshold value makes sure that the small mesh facets at very large distances from the source would not miss any impinging ray tubes during the simulation. === Polarimetric Channel Analysis === In a 3D SBR simulation, a transmitter shoots a large number of rays in all directions. The electric fields of these rays are polarimetric and their strength and polarization are determined by the designated radiation pattern of the transmit antenna. The rays travel in the propagation scene and bounce from the ground and buildings or other scatterers or get diffracted at the building edges until they reach the location of the receivers. Each individual ray has its own vectorial electric field and power. The electric fields of the received rays are then superposed coherently and polarimetrically to compute the total field at the receiver locations. The designated radiation pattern of the receivers is then used to compute the total received power by each individual receiver. From a theoretical point of view, the radiation patterns of the transmit and receive antennas are independent of the propagation channel characteristics. For the given locations of the point transmitters and receivers, one can assume ideal isotropic radiators at these points and compute the polarimetric transfer function matrix of the propagation channel. This matrix relates the received electric field at each receiver location to the transmitted electric field at each transmitter location. In general, the vectorial electric field of each individual ray is expressed in the local standard spherical coordinate system at the transmitter and receiver locations. In other words, the polarimetric channel matrix expresses the '''E_θ''' and '''E_φ''' field components associated with each ray at the receiver location to its '''E_θ''' and '''E_φ''' field components at the transmitter location. Each ray has a delay and θ and φ angles of departure at the transmitter location and θ and φ angles of departure at the receiver location. To perform a polarimatric channel characterization of your propagation scene, open EM.Terrano's Run Simulation dialog and select '''Channel Analyzer''' from the drop-down list labeled '''Select Solver or Simulation Type'''. At the end of the simulation, a large ray database is generated with two data files called "sbr_channel_matrix.DAT" and "sbr_ray_path.DAT". The former file contains the delay, angles of arrival and departure and complex-valued elements of the channel matrix for all the individual rays that leave each transmitter and arrive at each receiver. The latter file contains the geometric aspects of each ray such as hit point coordinates.