Pycraf

=======================

New Features
------------
pycraf.pathprof
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- Add some helper functions to ease working with other GIS data sets. An
example would be Landcover data (e.g., from Copernicus mission Corine data
set). There is also a tutorial notebook, demonstrating the use. [29]

=======================

New Features
------------
pycraf.antenna, pycraf.geometry
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- Several functions in the `antenna` and `geometry` sub-packages were
implemented in Cython and parallelized using OpenMP. This will greatly
speed-up Monte-Carlo simulations (e.g., EPFD, which is planned for the next
release), where lots of antenna-gain values and boresight angles need to be
computed. [22]


Bugfixes
--------
- `antenna.imt2020_composite_pattern` was using float32 precision, only, for
the real and imaginary part (in the complex valued internal calculation).
This has been fixed and now uses the `complex128` data type. [26]
- `antenna.imt` was using wrong units (dimension-less instead of dB) for
front-to-back ratios. Note, that all examples still have the same result,
as the input parameters were also chosen wrongly. [25]
- A more detailed error message is now raised, if `astropy.units` is already
imported - which is not allowed with `astropy` v4 anymore. Please see Issue
[24]

=======================

Other
-----
- Migrate CI/CD to Azure Pipelines. This also allows to provide
(manylinux-based) binary wheels for Linux on PyPI. [19]

=======================

New Features
------------

pycraf-gui
^^^^^^^^^^
- A simple graphical user interface was added, which can be used to quickly
analyze the path propogation losses along a transmitter-receiver sight-line
and plot the path geometry. It is also possible to compute attenuation
maps. At the moment, it doesn't come with an amazing amount of features,
but it is foreseen to add more in the future. [15]

pycraf.atm
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- Complete overhaul of the `pycraf.atm` sub-package [11]. Now
- it does ray-tracing through atmosphere correctly,
- the computational speed for Annex 1 algorithms (such as ray-tracing) is
greatly improved, as performance critical sections are implemented in
Cython and physical properties of the atmospheric layers are cached
- there are new functions, such as `pycraf.atm.find_elevation`, which finds
optimal ray geometry (to reach a given target)

pycraf.pathprof
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- The `pycraf.pathprof` sub-package was re-worked to improve parallel
computations in various places. Most of these are "under the hood", but
one new function is `losses_complete`. It can be used to do bulk
calculations of path propagation loss for fixed Tx-Rx location. This
makes computations of statistics much faster (see user manual). [16]

Bugfixes
--------
- For `pycraf.pathprof` we used the BFSG loss (see Rec. ITU-R P.452-16) as
proxy for line-of-sight loss. However, to bring it inline with the other
quantities returned by the `pycraf.pathprof.loss_complete`, we now use
L_b0p, which includes focussing effects [13, 16]
- `pycraf.geospatial` produced an error with newer version of `pyproj`.
Basically, the "+init=" part of the projection definition is now
deprecated. We removed this from the `pycraf.geospatial` module, but
as a consequence, `pyproj>=2.0` is now required. [10]
- Make `pycraf` compatible with `astropy>=4.0`, which doesn't offer some `
utils.compat` functions any more. [00556d]

=======================

Bugfixes
--------
- `pycraf.protection.ra769_limits` now returns an `astropy.table.QTable`
instead of a `astropy.table.Table`. This ensures that in all
circumstances one retrieves proper `astropy.units.Quantity` objects from
the table. Previously, logarithmic units would not fully support this
(although this was a just bug in `astropy`, which is now fixed). [8]

=======================

pycraf.antenna
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- Add k-factor to single element IMT2020 pattern in `pycraf.antenna`
module. [ef1c]
- Add antenna pattern function for IMT advance (LTE) basestation (sectorized,
peak-side lobe, see ITU-R Rec. F.1336) to `pycraf.antenna` module. [a4e1]

pycraf.srtm
^^^^^^^^^^^
- Various smaller improvements and bugfixes to SRTM querying.
[dcc5, 1950, 0c55]

Bugfixes
--------
- The `pycraf.geospatial` Gauss-Kruger test function revealed a problem with
inconsistent results between new proj4 version (5.2.0) and older versions.
At the moment, it is not clear, what's going on. The test cases have marked
"xfail" for now. [24e9]
- A sign was wrong in `pycraf.antenna` IMT2020 composite pattern. [4164]