ANN: UKW Tools 0.3.2 released

ANN: UKW Tools 0.3.2 released

[Jonathan Naylor]

Hi Folks

I'm pleased to announce that UKW Tools 0.3.2 has been released. This is 
an amateur radio GIS program type thingy, that allows for radio 
coverage, path plots and other good things to be done. In coverage mode 
it can be used for tracing the coverage of FM repeaters for example, the 
path plot mode is more useful for microwave types who want to get the 
path loss over a given path. There are lots of other bits and pieces 
that it does. The propagation model that it uses is the same as that 
used by John KD2BD in Splat!

By using the wxWidgets (nee wxWindows)  library, I have been able to 
make it portable to Windows also, and a Windows installer based version 
is also available on my web site.

The source code for UKW Tools is GPL as is my source for the Windows 
installer.

As released UKW Tools requires terrain data which is freely available on 
the Internet but requires access to broadband due to the amount 
required. The basic data I use is named SRTM and covers most of the 
earth at 90m-ish intervals but is sometimes inaccurate. I use either 
GTOPO30 or Globe data that covers the earth at 900m-ish intervals to 
remove any faults it finds.

UKW Tools can be downloaded from http://www.qsl.net/g4klx under 
Software.

My previous bits of software such as LinWSJT, MTrack and Baken are still 
available from the same place.

Share and Enjoy

Jonathan  G4KLX

PS does anyone know where I can get the source code for a soft decision 
Reed Solomon decoder ?

Re: ANN: UKW Tools 0.3.2 released

[Thomas Sailer]

Jonathan Naylor wrote:

> PS does anyone know where I can get the source code for a soft decision 
> Reed Solomon decoder ?

Soft decision decoding of block codes is hard to do efficiently. In fact I don't
know any algorithm that does it efficiently. That's why normally a convolutional code
is used as inner code 8-)

Tom

Re: ANN: UKW Tools 0.3.2 released

[Jonathan Naylor]

Hi Thomas

I hope things are well with you.

>Soft decision decoding of block codes is hard to do efficiently. In 
>fact I don't
>know any algorithm that does it efficiently. That's why normally a 
>convolutional code
>is used as inner code 8-)

I agree entirely, that would be my choice also. Concatenated codes is a 
much nicer way to do it BUT I am trying to clone JT65 and Joe Taylor 
used a soft decision RS decoder to gain 2dB advantage over a standard RS 
decoder, he didn't use a Convolution code as a front end. Unfortunately 
he signed a NDA to get the code from someone so I can't just use what he 
uses. I am not very happy about it.

I'm not too worried about efficiency since the decoding will not be done 
in real-time so if it takes many seconds to decode a message, then so be 
it. So if you have access to an inefficient soft decision RS decoder, I 
would still be interested :-)

I could use a standard RS decoder but I would lose 2dB which would make 
my decoder somewhat ineffective on an EME path compared to his.

>Tom

Jonathan