How to use fuction "coverage" to caculate a GEO satellite's coverage map?

The max range of the coverage must be less than or equal to maximum propagation distance, which is Earth's radius, 6371 km. However, how to use fuction "coverage" to caculate a GEO satellite's coverage map on earth? Like example lridium Satelite SootBeam Coverage on the US.

[Zora Aria Jade]

Misuse rfprop.PropagationModel/distancePathloss

Distance between sites must be less than or equal to maximum propagation distance, which is Earth's radius, 6371 km."

Answer 1

[Altaïr]

Hey @Zora Aria Jade,

The ‘coverage’ function needs transmitter sites and a propagation model as inputs, as detailed in the documentation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2023b/comm/ref/txsite.coverage.html

Transmitter sites can be created using the ‘txsite’ function, and the propagation model can be selected based on the desired path loss calculations. More information is available here:

• txsite: https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2023b/comm/ref/txsite.html
• PropagationModel: https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2023b/comm/ref/txsite.coverage.html?s_tid=doc_ta#mw_45354396-1741-41c2-8649-abf662f106b6_sep_mw_09e28e18-c8b9-4a40-ad43-c2f5f00fa19d

The example Iridium Satellite Spot Beam Coverage on the US demonstrates the coverage calculation for an antenna array and can be found at,

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2023b/phased/ug/iridium-satellite-spot-beam-coverage-on-map-of-us.html

The attached code contains a simplified version of the example. It plots the coverage map for a single satellite with default antenna properties. Note that the ‘Terrain’ property of the ‘siteviewer’ is set to ‘none’, in the attached code. This is necessary for analysing coverage distances greater than 500 km.

I believe this will assist you!

[Zora Aria Jade]

Thank you for your reply. However, the GEO satellite is about 35786km away from the ground, which exceeds the limit of 6371km, and its coverage map on the Earth cannot be calculated using the coverage function.

[Altaïr]

Yes, the Earth's radius appears to be the limiting factor for maximum propagation distance in propagation modeling.