Tutorials & Course Material

A structured tutorial series on the radio-propagation concepts behind Airendil, written to work both as self-study and as course material for a wireless-communications or RF-planning module. Every tutorial pairs the theory with experiments you can run in the live tool in minutes, so each equation is something you can see.

The course map

#	Tutorial	You'll learn	Theory level
1	Using the Tool	The complete workflow: place, analyze, budget, cover, export (a guided lab).	None (pure practice)
2	Fresnel Zones	Why "line of sight" isn't a line: the zone geometry, the radius formula, the 60 % rule, and earth curvature.	Algebra + one square root
3	Knife-Edge Diffraction	What happens when clearance fails: the ν parameter, J(ν) loss, and the Bullington / δ-Bullington constructions.	Comfort with logs; the physics is explained from scratch
4	Path-Loss Models	FSPL, diffraction-aware models and Okumura–Hata compared, showing what each assumes, when each is valid, and how far apart they land on the same link.	Builds on 2 & 3
5	Vegetation & Land Cover	How foliage attenuates a signal, how the tool reads land cover, and the Weissberger / ITU-R P.833 models.	Light

Take them in order the first time, since each builds on the previous, but they're written to stand alone as references afterwards.

How the tutorials are structured

Each tutorial follows the same rhythm:

1. The phenomenon: what physically happens, in words and pictures.
2. The math: the governing equations, derived or motivated, with every symbol defined. The same formulas the tool computes with (see RF Concepts & Formulas for the terse list).
3. Worked examples: real numbers, worked digit by digit, that you can reproduce in the tool.
4. Try it, short experiments in the live tool, marked like this:

TRY IT IN THE TOOL

Open tools.airendil.com, load the demo network (Settings → DATA → ☆ Load Demo Network), and click any link to see its terrain profile. That's the lab bench for the whole series.

5. Exercises: problems with answers, usable directly as homework.

For instructors

• The tutorials are self-contained. No textbook is assumed, and every model is cited by its standard name (ITU-R P.526, P.833, P.1812, Okumura–Hata, Weissberger) so students can find the primary sources.
• The tool is free for the entire analysis core. Students need no account and no license for any exercise in tutorials 1–4. (A handful of premium features appear in sidebars, marked ★, and are never required.)
• Every exercise is reproducible. The tool's formulas are documented exactly in RF Concepts, so hand calculations and tool outputs can be compared to the decibel.
• Sessions can be saved as KML files and distributed to students, who can import them to start from a common scenario (Saving & Export).
• Use this as a suggested lab sequence. Tutorial 1 works as a guided intro session, Tutorials 2–3 with the paired exercises as two problem sets, Tutorial 4 as a model-comparison lab report, and Tutorial 5 as an extension topic.

Prerequisites & notation

• Algebra and logarithms; no calculus is required (where an integral appears, it's explained and then replaced by the approximation the tool uses).
• Decibels: a ratio in tenths of a bel, dB = 10·log₁₀(P₂/P₁). dBm is absolute power relative to 1 mW (0 dBm = 1 mW, 30 dBm = 1 W). Gains add, losses subtract; multiplying powers becomes adding decibels.
• dBi is antenna gain relative to an isotropic radiator.
• Frequencies f in MHz unless stated; wavelength λ = 300/f metres.
• Distances in metres unless stated; d₁, d₂ are the distances from a point on the path to each end.

Ready? Start with Tutorial 1: Using the Tool.