Development of a Web-Based Calculator to Simulate Link Budget for Mobile Communications Systems at Urban Settlements

Radiofrequency and optical satellite link budgeting calculator

“…In this sense, it is fundamental that prior to such deployment of infrastructure, all the factors that may affect the communications link must be taken into account, to guarantee successful wireless link. Such factors may range from the frequency band to the transceivers, passing by facts as the communication protocols and propagation media [5].…”

“…To have a reliable estimated performance for a specific wireless link, it is fundamental to take acquaintance of the losses between the transmitter and the receiver, that is, the attenuation in the transmitted electromagnetic power due to the multiple phenomena that may occur during transmission [5]. In more common wireless communications systems as in cellular ones, this is usually performed with the establishment of path loss models, also called propagation models, which possess a high phenomenological basis and are highly dependent on the specific propagation scenario, as they are intended for ground to ground links [6,7,8].…”

“…The process of applying a certain path loss model to an specific case of communications system is called a link budget [5,9]. Thus, link budget process is designed to consider all the power loses and gains in the electromagnetic propagation for an specific hardware (transmitter and receiver), and including the transmission medium [5,9]. Thus, the adequate calculation of the link budget, becomes essential to evaluate and guarantee the efficiency and reliability of satellite communications.…”

“…Its objective is to determine the relationship between the power of the signal transmitted from the satellite and the power received at the ground station, taking into account the limitations and characteristics of the transmission channel. In this sense, final goal of link budgeting technique is to provide an equation to predict the received power in the receptor, as function of such gains and losses as well as of the transmitted power [5,9].…”

“…However, as experimentation to measure values to specifically design propagation models adapted for specific satellite communications systems is much more difficult than for ground to ground links, the development of path loss models for satellite communications systems has been a branch with scarce development. Thus, link budget calculation processes for satellite communications are less studied and may have different elements across the scientific literature, thus hindering efforts for the purpose of standardisation [5].…”