Adding a new simulation

To add a new simulation, go to Simulations, then:

• either click on the top right of the page,
• or clone an existing simulation as described in cloning a simulation.

Base station credit

Before launching a new simulation, make sure you have enough base station credit.

Your current remaining credit is displayed on the top right of the user interface. It corresponds to the total number of base stations that can be simulated in one or several simulations. Contact your ThingPark support team to purchase credit.

Each base station given as input in the simulation scope counts "1" in your credit verification, whether the Smart Antenna Selection feature is activated to optimize the candidate base station list, or not. A base station deactivated after an optimized simulation still counts as 1 credit.

If your CSV file contains more gateways than your current remaining credit, the simulation cannot be launched.

After launching a simulation, if it eventually fails, the related base station amount is credited back to your counter.

To learn more, see Credits.

Simulation parameters

To launch a simulation request, you need to fill in the different input parameters, guided by the table below. All the mandatory inputs are marked by a red asterisk.

Some inputs are already prefilled, either by default settings inherited from the user preferences or inherited from a cloned simulation. You may overwrite any prefilled value if needed.

Parameter	Description
Prediction type	- Safe type of predictions is realistic for all environments, with a slight safety margin < 1dB. - Optimistic type of predictions may be used to simulate the upper bound of the RF coverage using favorable propagation conditions.
Device TX Power	Maximum emission power of the end-device, as supported by its hardware, in dBm. Use a worst-case value if your deployment involves several device models with different transmission capabilities.
Device antenna gain	Antenna gain of the end-device, in dBi. Use a worst-case value if your deployment involves several device models with different hardware capabilities.
Device location	Worst-case location of end-devices served by your gateways. - Outdoor: The device is outside, there is no wall around it. - Indoor Daylight: The device is located inside a room on the edge of a building, it is close to the building facade. This mode is also known as light indoor mode or indoor first wall. - Deep Indoor: The device is located inside a room deep inside a building. There are several walls around it. - Basement: The device is located under the ground, or in a very deep indoor location inside a building, with a lot of metallic barriers. Note The simulation results show the expected coverage of all the indoor penetrations deeper than or equal to the selected location. For instance, if the user selects "Indoor daylight", the simulation output will show the predicted coverage of 3 indoor levels: indoor daylight, deep indoor and basement.
Device height from ground	Typical setting = 0.5 or 1m to model a device location at the ground floor, which is a kind of worst-case scenario compared to devices located at higher floors. Must be >0 even if a device is located in a basement (in which case set “Device location” = Basement and set “Height from ground” = 0.1: with this setting, the effect of the end-device location is directly modeled in the “basement” indoor penetration losses, not through the antenna height).
Country	Country where your gateways are (or will be) deployed. The country set in the user preferences is used by default but you can change it if needed. The selected country automatically dictates the regulatory limits such as ISM band, Max radiated power and maximum allowed spreading factor.
ISM Band	This parameter defines the LoRaWAN regional profile corresponding to your deployment. By default, it is directly inherited from the country regulations, but you may change it if your country supports several regional profiles (for instance, both EU868 and AS923 are supported in Philippines).
Max Uplink radiated TxPower	Maximum authorized effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) imposed by the country regulation, for uplink direction, in dBm.
Max Downlink RX1 radiated TxPower	Maximum authorized effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) imposed by the country regulation, for downlink direction and applicable to RX1 frequencies, in dBm.
Max Downlink RX2 radiated TxPower	Maximum authorized effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) imposed by the country regulation, for downlink direction and applicable for RX2 frequencies, in dBm.
Uplink Noise Rise	Average noise rise over the thermal noise level as seen by the gateway, in dB. - By default, this value is set to 10dB, but it is strongly recommended to set the appropriate value reflecting the noise floor measured by the spectrum analyzer or the gateway onsite. - For more information about spectrum measurements, see the Spectrum Analysis User Guide.
Downlink Noise Rise	Average noise rise over the thermal noise level as seen by the end-device, in dB. This value may be either: - derived from uplink noise rise measurements, taking into account the difference between the end-device location and gateway location. For example, if the end-device is expected to be located deep indoors, it is reasonable to assume 5-10dB lower downlink noise floor than what could be measured by a gateway located outdoors at rooftop. - Alternatively, the expected downlink noise floor could be measured by a spectrum analyzer.
Maximum Uplink Spreading Factor	Maximum authorized UL SF at the cell edge. Note that RF coverage is usually maximized by using the lowest data rate (that is to say, the highest spreading factor) allowed by the corresponding regulatory body (for instance: SF12 in Europe, SF10 in USA). However, some high mobility use cases (tracking, for instance) might require using lower SF for optimal performance under fast fading channel conditions.
Downlink RX2 Spreading Factor	Spreading factor used to send downlink packets over RX2 window. Note that the downlink link budget computed by the tool relies on RX2 window, since it is considered the limiting DL slot from delay standpoint.
Uplink number of transmissions	This parameter defines how many times each uplink frame (that is to say, each FCntUp as per LoRaWAN specification) may be transmitted by a device located at cell edge. For instance, if set to 2, it means that cell edge devices are allowed to send each uplink packet twice.
Digital Elevation Model Type	This field defines the type of digital elevation maps (DEM) used in the simulation: - Either bare-earth digital topography maps for continental Europe, - or JAXA's digital service maps for the rest of the world. The default setting of the DEM type depends on your choice of the Country of operation. If you select a european country having territories outside continental Europe, you should select the right DEM type according to the area covered by your simulation: choose Digital Surface Model if it is outside continental Europe.
Diffraction settings	The default choice depends on the selected DEM: Continental Europe's DTM allows you to simulate the diffraction effect of earth topography for all environments without being negatively impacted by clutter heights (buildings and vegetation). Hence, it is recommended to use the setting "Activated for all environments" only when DEM type = Digital Terrain Mode Europe. For non-european countries, the recommended diffraction setting is "Activated for suburban and rural", as activating the diffraction computation for urban environments may provide pessimistic predictions.
Smart Antenna Selection	By default, this feature is deactivated. Activate it if you want the tool to select the best base stations to cover a defined area, among a list of candidate site locations provided in the input csv file. To learn more, see About Smart Antenna Selection.
Polygon	When the Smart Antenna Selection feature is activated, you must draw a polygon on the map to define the target area to be covered. To learn more, see About Smart Antenna Selection.
Target area coverage percentage	When the Smart Antenna Selection feature is activated, you must set the minimum acceptable coverage ratio of the total area of interest. To learn more, see About Smart Antenna Selection.

Preparing the base station list

Click Export BS List if you want to simulate the coverage of some or all of the base stations declared on your ThingPark SaaS account. The base stations exported in the CSV file are only the ones associated with an outdoor gateway model. Indoor base stations models (such as Kerlink iFemtocell, Browan femto, Multitech Access Point...) will not be exported since the propagation models are only accurate if the base station antenna is located outdoors above the surrounding buildings.

If you do not yet have base stations on your ThingPark SaaS account, or you do not want to include your existing BS fleet to the simulation, click Download sample file to get the CSV template file and fill it with the data you want.

The base station characteristics are uploaded to the simulation through a csv file. Each line represents one base station. For each base station, you need to fill the following information:

• A unique ID, also known as LRR-ID in ThingPark terminology. You can fill it with the base station ID, its friendly name...
• The base station's GPS coordinates, expressed as latitude and longitude in decimal degree format.
• The base station's height above ground, in meters. Note that this is not the GPS altitude.
• Propagation environment: you must associate each base station with a propagation environment among the values {DENSE_URBAN, URBAN, SUBURBAN, RURAL}. To learn more about how to choose the right environment, see Propagation environments.
• Antenna pattern: you can see the list the supported antenna patterns in the Antenna Pattern page of the user interface. The Antenna_pattern column must be filled with the antenna name as written in the Antenna Pattern tab.
• Cable losses in dB. This loss corresponds to the cable, and connector losses. Typical value is around 0.5dB, assuming a short jumper between the gateway connector and the antenna. If longer feeders are installed between the gateway and the antenna, you must compute the right cable losses according to the feeder datasheet (considering the feeder length).

note

If your base station is already declared on your ThingPark SaaS account and you have already filled the "Propagation Environment" and/or "Cable loss" information under your A1 antenna settings, these values shall be directly prefilled by the tool when exporting your BS list; so that you can directly reuse them in your input csv file.

CSV file verification

When the CSV file is imported, the tool checks that the CSV format is correct (comma ',' or semi-column ';' separation and UTF-8 without BOM) and that all the columns are correctly filled with relevant values. If there are errors in the CSV file, they are displayed by the tool in the Synthesis step. When this is the case, you must modify your CSV file accordingly before launching the simulation.

caution

The geographical area covered by the simulation must be less than 10,000 km² otherwise the simulation cannot start. This area is computed according to the minimum and maximum latitude/longitude of the base stations included in the simulation scope.

About Smart Antenna Selection

When the Smart Antenna Selection feature is activated for a given simulation, the Network Coverage tool shall execute several iterations in the purpose of optimizing (that is to say, minimizing) the number of base stations required to cover at least Z% of the geographical area of interest.

• Z is defined by the simulation parameter Target area coverage percentage.
• The geographical area of interest is defined by a polygon drawn by the user on the map, when defining a new simulation. This polygon is also displayed by the tool in the simulation results. The GPS coordinates of the polygon's corners are also reported in the .json file of the simulation output.

The optimization algorithm acts as follows:

1. The tool computes the individual coverage provided by each base station and compute its individual coverage ratio to the area of interest.
2. In the first iteration, the tool selects the base station having the highest individual coverage ratio.
3. Then, with this first BS activated, the tool recomputes the incremental coverage of each remaining BS (on top of the coverage provided by the already-activated BS), then activates the one having the highest incremental coverage ratio.
4. Then the process restarts with as many iterations as needed to achieve the target coverage percentage. The simulation stops once the Aggregated coverage ratio >= Target area coverage percentage.

note

To optimize the simulation time, the calculation also stops when the incremental coverage percentage of each remaining base station is < 0.1% while the aggregated coverage ratio is below Target area coverage percentage - 3%.

In the simulation output, the following information is provided:

• In the simulation list:

  • The number of activated BS is displayed out of the total number of candidate base stations. Example means that 22 base stations have been activated by the tool, out of 117 candidate BS.

  • The optimization status is represented by a smiley:

    • A green (happy) face means that the tool has successfully reached the coverage target.
    • An orange face means that the tool could not reach the coverage target with the original candidate BS list. To meet the coverage requirements, additional base station candidates must be included in the input CSV file to cover the remaining white spots.
    • A red (sad) face means that none of the candidate base station locations offers RF coverage inside the area of interest. The user must then check the definition of the polygon used to define the area of interest.
    tip

    Hover your mouse on the smiley displayed in the user interface to see its meaning.

• In the simulation details: List of base stations that have been selected for activation by the tool, among the list of original candidate base stations. This list shows the base stations in the order they have been selected by the tool.

• On the map: Activated base stations are displayed with a marker, whereas base stations that have not be selected (that is to say, deactivated) are marked with a marker.

Getting the simulation results

Once the simulation is launched, you can follow its status on the Simulations list.

When the simulation is completed, the tool sends a notification email, with a link to the simulation results, as well as the resulting heatmap attached in .kmz format.

If the simulation fails, the credit used at the beginning of the simulation is restored to your account.

In the Simulations list, the Optimization column indicates whether the Smart Antenna Selection feature was activated and a smiley specifies if the target area coverage percentage was reached, not reached or if no base station can cover this area.

When selecting a simulation result with the smart antenna selection feature activated, the simplified view displays:

• the targeted coverage set as input for the simulation
• the effective coverage reached with the activated base stations
• the activated base station count

For each base station, with the Smart Antenna Selection feature activated, the output shows:

• the percentage of coverage for the target area
• the incremental coverage percentage added by the base station.