Implementation of Digital terrain data in SEAMCAT
When implementing terrain there were some prerequisites which needed to be fulfilled to have meaningful implementation in SEAMCAT. These were:
do not change the purpose and logic of the tool, i.e. keep the Monte-Carlo stochastic tool for sharing and compatibility simulation, for example, positions of Tx and Rx are randomly generated according to user settings with a geo-reference point enabling geo-positioning,
enable the use of publicly available digital terrain data from different satellite missions (e.g. SRTM, ASTER, etc.), which user can download and put in the computer folder for the area of interest,
develop readers of the most common formats of digital terrain data, where the user can use all digital terrain data available (not limited to public sources), determine which format of data to use in specific study and choose data precision raster,
have in-tool embedded functionality to load data tiles and extract terrain height profile from Tx and Rx coordinates,
use a SEAMCAT library of propagation model plugins to calculate propagation loss with terrain height profile in tools, simulation, interference analysis, EPPs, user defined plugins and integrate these functionalities seamlessly.
