MSI is the extension mostly used in combination with antenna radiation patterns in planet antenna format.

Planet is a RF propagation simulation tool initially developed by MSI. Planet was a 2G radio planning tool which has set a standard in the early days of computer aided radio network design. The antenna pattern file and the format which is currently known as ".msi" format or .msi-file has become a standard.

The antenna pattern file is an ASCII Text file and the general information, horizontal data points and vertical data points are stored in one file. The left column label and the data is separated by at least one space. The horizontal data and vertical data can be separated by at least one space or a Tab character.

There must be 360 data points (0 through 359) for the Horizontal data and 360 data points (0 through 359) for the Vertical data. Zero degrees represents North for the Horizontal pattern and Zero degrees represents the horizon for the Vertical pattern. The antenna gain unit is dBd. If the Gain is in dBi, it must be indicated after the Gain value (separated with at least one space). All gain datapoints are relative to maximum gain being zero. Any value below zero is assumed to be negative. Do not include the minus sign for these values.

The name of the antenna should be the first line of the file

Variables:

Sample file: