RF Channel Modeler Plugin Overview

The Ansys RF Channel Modeler™ plugin, a high-fidelity wireless channel modeling software tool, enables you to perform analyses such as the following:

  • Determine optimal locations to place base stations and antenna systems for both RF and radar systems
  • Generate radar images of specific locations and objects

An example would be for network planners to use the plugin in an Ansys Systems Tool Kit® STK® application scenario to determine optimal placements and transceiver settings for a wireless phone network in a city.

The plugin is powered by Ansys Perceive EM™ software, a computational electromagnetic simulator that employs the shooting and bouncing rays (SBR) technique for analysis and leverages the graphic processing unit (GPU) acceleration features to reduce computation time. Placing the Perceive EM engine inside of the STK application enables you to produce frame-by-frame range-Doppler data or raw receiver in-phase and quadrature (I/Q) channel data as calculated in a high-fidelity geospatial environment.

To set up and run an analysis, you need to complete the following steps:

  1. Generate antenna patterns for the antennas you plan to model, other than parametric beam.
  2. Create an STK application scenario to simulate the physical environment, including importing 3D tilesets of the region, specifying custom materials, and creating objects needed for the scenario such as base station facilities, ground vehicles, airplanes, etc., as well as sensor objects to which you can apply transceivers in RF Channel Modeler plugin.
  3. Use the RF Channel Modeler plugin to import and configure the antenna patterns, add and configure transceivers, set up the specifics for the analysis, and calculate the results.

The RF Channel Modeler plugin produces an HDF5 file that contains high-fidelity scattering parameter antenna-to-antenna coupling data.

You can run the RF Channel Modeler plugin through the RFCM API. For a description of available sample code, see the RF Channel Modeler section of the Plugin Samples topic page in the STK Programming Help. If you execute the RF Channel Modeler plugin through the Object Model, you must set the following system environment variables:
ANSYSCL251_DIR: Set this to the licensing client directory in your STK application install directory, nominally C:\Program Files\AGI\STK 12\licensingclient.
ANSYSLIC_DIR: Set this to the licensing folder located in the STK application install directory. The location is nominally C:\Program Files\AGI\STK 12\Shared Files\Licensing.

RF Channel Modeler plugin overview

The RF Channel Modeler plugin is a separate download and license. You can contact tech support for information on how to get the download and license for your organization.

Make sure your computer meets the system requirements for the STK application in general and specifically for the RF Channel Modeler plugin, including the requirement for at least one graphics processing unit (GPU).

When you start the STK application, select the check box for the RF Channel Modeler plugin license to activate the RF Channel Modeler plugin. You also need to select an STK application license (Professional, Enterprise, etc.).

Opening the RF Channel Modeler plugin in the STK application

There are two ways to open the RF Channel Modeler plugin once inside the STK application. You can open it by clicking the Utilities menu and selecting RF Channel Modeler. You can also have the RF Channel Modeler icon () appear in the STK application toolbar area by going to the View tab and selecting Toolbars > RF Channel Modeler. You can then click the icon for plugin startup.

Explore the user interface

The RF Channel Modeler plugin UI has three main tabs at the top. The intention is for you to step through them in order from left to right to set up and run one or more analyses. For information on each of these tabs, go to the following links:

When you make a change to any of these tabs, you can choose one of three options at the bottom of the UI:

  • OK: Click this to save the changes and close the RF Channel Modeler utility.
  • Cancel: Click this to ignore the changes and close the RF Channel Modeler utility.
  • Apply: Click this to save the changes and keep the RF Channel Modeler utility open.

There is also a Message Log tab in which you can view all messages produced by analysis runs. Each message lists the following information: Date/Time, Type, and Message. Click the Clear () icon to remove all message logging information from this tab.