In the real world, terrain features can impact radio and tactical communications causing degradation or complete loss of signal. This is highly relevant on the battlefield, and translates to a desirable--and often necessary--training element, particularly for ground-based operators and vehicles.

ASTi's Terrain Interface software applies occulting, ranging, and degradation effects to communication paths in the ACE radio environment. The interface also allows a terrain server on the host network to specify pathloss due to local terrain.

Customers may use their own terrain databases or ASTi's Terrain Database server to query software along with the Terrain Interface to provide occulting and signal degradation information. The use of a database offloads the complete simulation of terrain effects from the communications environment including voice and tactical data transmissions, jamming, etc.

Terrain Interface capabilities include:

• Ability to choose between any combination of occulting, ranging and terrain effects.
• Set software to send out requests to a remote server for pathloss effects.
• Verify terrain propagation by viewing variables in the tuners.