# An Optimized Planning Tool for Microwave Terrestrial and Satellite Link Design
## 1 Introduction  
Terrestrial and satellite radio frequency and microwave systems are commonly used to connect communication services, by providing a peer-to-peer link, and are used to transmit data from one point to another. They introduce advantages for long-distance communication, such as high portability, easy installation, and lower installation and operational costs. Currently, these systems are used to provide access to the internet and other communication services in rural and precarious regions [1; 2; 3], in addition to being used for everyday human activities and having multiple industrial applications [4]. The design of these types of systems is a methodical and time-consuming process that requires calculations such as attenuation, fading, margins, frequency planning, and evaluation of the line-of-sight (LoS) in a given link, following the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) standards. Given the increased number of variables involved, a perfectly precise solution becomes almost impossible to achieve, relying on module simulations [5]. To address the gaps between system specification, system simulation, and circuit-level simulation, modeling and simulation must accompany the design phases from specification to the overall system verification [6]. To analyze \"what it\" scenarios, a main estimation is made with calculations, allowing an evaluation of the reliability of the designed link. This estimate is defined as the link budget. Since the change in a single characteristic can impose itself on the whole linkbudget, a recalculation of the ITU-R specification models is in order. As a consequence, a constant manual recalculation of this model becomes impractical for engineering fields. In the academic field, the ability to provide an application of the methods studied can be a valuable asset in gaining a greater grasp, not only of the methods themselves but also of how they evolve as a result of a change in scenario. For this reason, being able to provide an easy-to-understand demonstration of the process required for the design of systems holds high educational value for engineering academic subjects. Although tools to provide this service have already been developed and distributed, the available tools have several drawbacks such as unaffordable pricing for academic use (licenses can cost over USD 300 monthly [7]), outdated specifications in terms of standards used, and poor user experience. Subsequently, a need arises for an all-in-one tool that can provide the principal features needed to assert system link budgets, available at an affordable price for students and without compromising on the educational value of intermediate computations. This leads to a reduction in the time it takes engineers to compute all the components of the link budget of a designed link by providing an easy-to-understand graphical user interface to be used by users with little to no instructions. To assess the QoS of a communication link, the general steps presented in Figure 1 were established to develop the tool. As shown, the user must define the variables where the link will be implemented. This group of steps provides a vast number of iterations to find the optimal characteristics for the best QoS possible. For terrestrial communications, the route selection, antenna characteristics, and radio characteristics exert a major effect on the attenuation found through the link path, which will subsequently impact the metrics used to evaluate the link. In satellite communications, although most of the attenuations found in terrestrial systems are not applied, the choices of orbit and antenna positions (which will also determine the link connection distance) reflect major changes in the attenuations found and, as a consequence, in the necessary characteristics found in the link budget to make the designed link possible.