Radio Propagation Prediction Tool for AM Broad-casting

Abstract

The aim of this Thesis was to develop a radio propagation tool in order to calculate the radio coverage of an AM transmitter. The position and technical parameters of the AM transmitter are given through a Graphical User Interface (GUI), and the resulting electric field strength is calculated above a geographical map of the area under study. The type of geographical maps that were used, were Geotiff maps. The electric field strength due to ground wave propagation, is calculated through ITU’s GRWAVE program. In order to calculate the radio coverage of an AM transmitter, it was necessary to develop maps in geotiff format that would represent different regions of ground conductivity (Greece in our case). Regions bearing the same conductivity parameters are represented by a unique colour. A simple GUI was created in MATLAB, so that maps could be imported and facili-tated in MATLAB's environment for ground wave propagation calculations. Finally, the ra-dio coverage of an AM transmitter is determined by calculating the resultant electric field strength along several radials taken from the transmitter's location at a user-specified angle step depending on the degree of detail desired. The main objective of the Thesis was accomplished except for the accuracy of the used geotiff maps describing ground wave conductivity. Due to time limitations, the developed maps utilize only three different colours to represent three different types of conductivity. Nevertheless, the developed software tool was designed so that it can handle .tif maps with an arbitrarily large number of different conductivity segments