Approximating radio maps

Given a terrain T and an antenna A located on it, we would like to approximate the radio map of A over T, namely, to associate the signal strength of each point p ϵ T as received from A. Several facility location algorithms, which involve locating large scale wireless networks (WiMAX), use approximated radio maps algorithms. In fact, computing radio maps is often the runtime bottle-neck of such facility location algorithms. This article suggests a new radar-like algorithm (RLA) for approximating radio maps. We also report on experiments performed to compare between the suggested new algorithm, and other well-known methods. The main conclusion is that the new algorithm (RLA) is significantly better than the others, i.e. its running time is 3-5 times faster for the same approximation accuracy.