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Antenna patterns are mostly issued by the manufacturer of the antenna. Where the serious manufacturers measure the radiation pattern their antenna, some manufacturers provide radiation patterns calculated by simulation software. These simulated antenna patterns can be accurate within a dB. in any case do prevent the usage of radiation patterns published in catalogues. These are inaccurate.
When antenna patterns are not available for the used antenna they have to be created by measurement or simulation. When available antenna patterns are not in the right format for usage in Radio Mobile they have to be converted.
Radio Mobile uses 3-types of antenna files, V1, V2, and V3. V1 only uses the horizontal plane where V2 and V3 use a portion and the complete vertical radiation pattern. The antenne files are described in 'The program > File formats > antenna .ant format V1' ,'The program > File formats > antenna .ant format V2', 'The program > File formats > antenna .ant format V3'
One well known antenna format is the 'msi' format also know as the Planet format. It is used in many radio planning programs. In this chapter we give 2 ways to convert a msi format file to any version file for radio mobile.
Conversion using Antenna Editor of CTT
Antenna Pattern Editor is a free universal tool to view, create, edit and convert antenna patterns. The main idea embedded in the program is to provide the user with the opportunity to quickly create an antenna pattern file using various methods. Supported antenna pattern file formats are:
- MSI Planet (*.msi, *.pla, *.pln, *.ptn, *.txt, *.ant)
- Radio Mobile V3 (*.ant)
- NSMA WG16.99.050 (*.adf *.dat *.nsma *.nsm *.txt)
- TIA/EIA-804-B (*.adf)
- EDX (*.pat)
What you need.
Conversion
Follow the instructions that come with the distribution.
Conversion using a Excel sheet.
What you need.
- A spread sheet program that can use the file msi2ant.xls (Excel, or Open Office)
- A ASCII text editor (Notepad++)
- Any antenna pattern file in msi format.
Step 1
Download the file msi2ant.xls and copy it on your disk.
Step 2
Open the antenna pattern file in msi format with your favourite SCII text editor Select all the content and copy it on your clipboard (ctrl-c) Open the excel sheet msi2ant.xlscopy the content of the antenna pettern file starting from cell N1 (see the example) Step 3
Convert the copied data to multiple cells
If required; convert de decimal sign in the copied data in to the required symbol (applies to Holland where ',' end '.' are exchanged)
Select all data starting with 360 (HORIZONTAL)
Copy this data to cell B1 and downwards
Step 4
In column I, J, and K, the content of the antenna file is presented.
Select the data in the format required and copy it to you favourite ASCII text editor.
Save the file and give it a appropriate name.
Ready.
Conversion using a PHP-script
Brian Fields created a PHP-script to convert antenna files from planet to .ant format.
What you need.
- PHP installed on a computer,
- The following PHP-script:
<?
if (!isset($argv[1]) ) { echo "usage: php convert.php patfile\n";
return; } else { $pat=$argv[1]; }
$s=file_get_contents($pat); $r = preg_split('/\R/', $s); if
(count($r)<1) echo "Invalid file type\n"; $p=1;
foreach ($r as $l=>$k) { $ln=$l+1; if($ln==547 || $ln==727) {continue;}
if (preg_match("/((?:-){0,1}\d{1,3},((?:-){0,1}\d{1,3}\.\d{2}))/s",
$k,$mt)) { $p=0; echo $mt[2] . "\r\n"; } }
if ($p==1) echo ("Invalid file type\n");
?>
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This code is published under GPL v2 license.
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