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.

• Download the free Antenna Editor form CTT from https://www.wireless-planning.com/antenna-pattern-editor

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

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

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");
 ?>

 This code is published under GPL v2 license.

Do you need antenna files for Radio Mobile ? RFSee offers free antenna pattern files for Radio Mobile.