Network, Radio Link and Route Styles

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The Style pane is accessed from the Network Properties pane below, (File/Network Properties)

or by a click on the toolbar icon:

A click on the Style button shows the definitions selected for the Network signal path displays, where a +/-3dB signal level relative to receiver sensitivity is selected as a Yellow line. Signals >3dB being shown in Green, and <-3dB shown as Red.

The check boxes adjacent to the coloured lines define whether a Network display shows these colours on the plot - i.e. only Green signal level links could be selected showing signals links >+3dB above the receiver threshold only, using the settings below.

Changing the level (dB) settings, alters the threshold colour line plots for the Network, Radio Link and Route panes, and also the drawn Route - Note that the check box selection doesn't apply to these plots, only the Network plot!

With a Network, Radio Link and Route plot, the Yellow overlay colour can be removed by selecting the same level in the two 'dB' boxes, to give a display with Green and Red plots only.

As a demonstration of the effects on a Network display, a number of Units have been placed on a VHF version of my Base Network below. These units have all been set to be Rebroadcast, to make every unit link to every other one as in a data network.

It can be seen that links are shown in Green, Yellow and Red, which correspond to signal levels >+3dB for Green, +/-3dB for Yellow and, <-3dB for Red links. This is the case where all colours are selected on the Style pane as above.

Selecting the Green check box only, changes the display to just show Network signal levels which are >3dB above their receiver thresholds - a much less cluttered display.

Whilst selecting the Yellow checkbox only, makes the Network display show only signal paths with signal levels between +3dB and -3dB on receiver threshold levels.

and selecting the Red checkbox only, makes the Network display show only signal paths with signal levels less than -3dB on receiver threshold levels.

Changing the threshold settings to +15dB and 0dB with Green colour selected, changes the number of links shown to those with the greater threshold. This can be useful to explore data paths requiring a higher signal threshold capable of higher data rates.

With the above setting of +15dB and 0dB thresholds - and Green only selected for Network displays, a Route can be drawn. This clearly shows the changed colour threshold levels, with all colours being shown on the path signal strength plot when compared with level scale on the left axis.

Note that the Network colour selection check boxes have no effect on these displays!

The corresponding Radio Link for the path above is shown, with the cursor slightly above the threshold of the Green and Yellow regions - showing a relative signal strength of 15.2dB above receiver threshold at that point.

As a final reminder, if it is required to only show Green and Red colours on the plots without the Yellow region, this may be achieved by setting the two signal threshold levels to the same value on the Style pane.

This page is available in pdf format here.

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19th June 2008