Development of a Web-Based Simulation Tool to Estimate the Path Loss in Outdoor Environments using OpenStreetMaps [Wireless Corner]

The implementation of a web-based application to estimate the path loss in outdoor environments is presented in this article. The tool provides the results of an empirical formulation in a user-friendly interface. The benefit of the proposed system is that the required information of the environment is obtained from OpenStreetMap, which allows the calculation of the propagation everywhere easily. In addition, the formulation is applicable to both rural and urban environments. The web application has been implemented using HTML5 and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)3. The open source JavaScript library Leaflet has been used to include interactive maps. The simulation tool has been validated with measurements in a real environment. A good agreement between simulated and measured results has been found.