Cloud-RFTM is a user friendly service for modelling radio propagation
There’s nothing to install but you get premium features you’d expect from a legacy desktop package. Pay for a plan and you are ready to go in seconds with your browser. No more downloading gigabytes of terrain data, antenna patterns or preparing clutter layers – we have it all installed and ready to go and add more regularly by request. You don’t need to attend long and expensive training – if you’re not sure about something help is only a click away.
The intuitive interfaces have been built and shaped from user feedback since its inception as an Android app in 2011. It covers the entire above-HF RF spectrum with generous height ceilings and distances for aircraft, large power limits for long range broadcasters, meshes for WISP and IoT networks, cellular propagation models for mobile networks and environmental variables to accommodate suburban, rural and mountain planners alike.
The empirical and deterministic models available are applicable for most wireless technologies and the cross-platform interfaces are simple enough for novices with advanced features for professional engineers including bit error rate.
Our n-threaded SLEIPNIRTM propagation engine has been designed for use with precision LiDAR surface models and 3D buildings and is up to ten times faster than open source engines.
Our mission
We want to make radio planning accessible. We’re achieving this not through cost alone as there’s established free solutions out there but simplicity. This starts with our clear and reasonable pricing which we’re not embarrassed to publish! Radio modelling is complicated and normally needs an enormous amount of resources and preparation to do it accurately. We want it to be affordable, accurate and user-friendly.
We want to develop a mature, stable and accessible service which you can help with by feedback.
Who we are
The business Cloud-RFTM is a veteran owned company, based in the United Kingdom with high performance servers worldwide.
It was founded by Alex Farrant CEng who has worked in radio for over 22 years. He mastered the art of radio propagation throughout an active military career specialising in telecommunications. The need was realised on operations where very expensive premium solutions were not being used due to complexity and a lack of availability. In 2011 Alex designed and published a popular Android app for pocket RF planning which grew from a hobby to a full time business.
Innovation timeline
At Cloud-RF we pride ourselves in innovation and have transformed the way people conduct radio coverage modelling, disrupting what was a very expensive, and thereby exclusive, windows desktop market. Prior to Cloud-RF it was not unusual for companies to spend £10k on a license for desktop radio software. Those same companies are now getting access for multiple employees, from any device, for a fraction of that amount which aside from cost, puts planning tools into the hands of staff across a company, not just one or two key staff.
- 2011 – RFSignal for Android launched, reached top 50 in communications category on Play
- 2012 – CloudRF.com website launched with web interface and global 90m DEM (Origin 2000)
- 2013 – Keyhole Radio™ interactive layer for Google earth
- 2014 – Lots of features added to engine and interfaces, Virtual machines offered
- 2015 – More propagation models, channel intersection and mesh features
- 2016 – LiDAR high resolution support in engine and interfaces. UK 2m and US city DSM uploaded
- 2017 – Drone photogrammetry support via Pix4D, more servers, global DSM at 30m (Origin 2014)
- 2018 – New LiDAR propagation engine SLEIPNIR developed. LIDAR for NZ, Estonia, Sweden, DC, Baltimore..
- 2019 – Seamless 30m Landcover with 584 types for CONUS and EU, KML ‘do-it-yourself’ clutter upload, 3D clutter with material densities
- 2020 – 3D buildings with configurable attenuation, 3D cross-platform interface
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Supported technologies
Anything that uses radio from 20-100,000MHz. We bound ourselves by the laws of physics not regulatory bodies or manufacturers. The tool can be used to support specific standards like LTE / 4G / 5G but won’t have advanced protocol specific parameters. It will however show you the path loss for an eNodeB at 15m above ground level on 800MHz with LiDAR accuracy…
Platforms
Android, Linux, Mac/OSX and Windows are all supported. Our unique Google earth plugin ‘Keyhole Radio™’ lets you run the software directly from within the application. Our 3D interface will adjust to any device from old iPhones to desktop computers.
Google Chrome or Firefox is recommended for best performance.
Free software is only free if you don’t value your time
We built Cloud-RF as an easy interface to complex command line modelling software as we knew lots of people, especially small businesses, needed RF planning tools but couldn’t justify $10,000-35,000 for a premium software package or have the expertise required to use Radio Mobile, SPLAT! or similar Ham tools.
We’ve been perfecting our software-as-a-service over 9 years to make it fast, easy and accurate. We’ve watched many customers and competitors, big and small, try to do the same and quit as either they’re out of time, or in the case of development teams they’ve spent more than the cost of a premium package – and still haven’t got an MVP. There is no one secret formula we have (we have lots :p) except we’ve spent 9 years mastering complex terrain data, clutter data, antenna patterns, interfaces, engines, HPC, propagation models, diffraction, attenuation, GIS, LiDAR, web services and APIs.
Pricing
We set the bar for pricing of SaaS RF modelling software. Our low pricing reflects our open source roots and is designed for small businesses, students and consultants on a budget. Sales teams from competitors selling +$10,000 legacy tools say our software is inaccurate but customers who have come from there and stayed with us for years disagree. If you have a link you want us to compare to prove it please bring it on: support@cloudrf.com
We’re not perfect though: One of our propagation models dates back to 1946 but because no-one updated the laws of physics….it delivers for urban IoT today.
We also have on demand credits for emergency and ad-hoc usage.