Radio Engineering Services announced the release of a new version of HERALD Professional, a PC program for Windows that assists radio engineers in the design of point-to-point (multi-hop) microwave links and networks, in the frequency range from 0.4 to 58 GHz.

Main features in the new HERALD Professional version include:

Import/Export from/to Google Earth: Radio Site position and name can be defined on Google Earth, then imported to Herald; similarly, radio network topology, as defined in Herald, can be displayed in Google Earth.

Use of Irregular terrain Model (ITM, Longley-Rice) to estimate reliability of radio links below about 3 GHz as an alternative to usual Fresnel ellipsoid analysis.

Crane rain attenuation model (in addition to ITU-R model) to estimate rain unavailability.

Comparison of design predictions with link quality/availability objectives, with user choice between ITU-R and North America Standards.

HERALD's goal is to offer an easy-to-use, low-cost tool, covering the gap between simple spreadsheet computations and sophisticated design suites. Main HERALD tasks include Site/Hop configuration; Customized Libraries for Antenna/Radio Equipment selection; Link Budget computation; Path Profile analysis (clearance, reflections); Prediction of Multipath outage and Rain unavailability; Interference analysis in a p-p radio network; Passive repeaters with plane reflector or back-to-back antennas; Project documentation (video and printed outputs) in English, Spanish, or Italian (other languages on request); and One-click access to Background Theory document in HTML format. Path profiles are imported from NASA/SRTM digital elevation maps (worldwide coverage, raster resolution 1-3 arcseconds, available for downloading at no cost).

HERALD Professional licensees are provided with one-year free (e-mail and Skype) assistance for any problem in Sw installation and use, as well as in radio link engineering background.