LunarRF: A Terrain-Aware Propagation Engine and Pole-Wide 3GPP Surface Coverage Atlas of the Lunar South Pole
Abstract
Artemis surface operations will depend on 3GPP cellular links, yet no public product shows where such links are physically possible across the lunar south pole. We present LunarRF, a GPU system for terrain-aware surface coverage, and the pole-wide atlas produced with it. A footprint engine casts 8192 radial profiles from one of 11,827 candidate masts enumerated by stated rules on the orbit-adjusted LOLA elevation model, takes the viewshed, and evaluates ITU-R P.1812 Delta-Bullington propagation on every profile, continuous through the radio horizon. An order-independent resolver merges the footprints per 20 m cell, making the run shardable and resumable. The atlas covers the disc south of 80°S at 20 m for four SFCG-recommended surface bands and the IM-2 demonstration band, 1.8 to 25.375 GHz, under a stated link budget, storing per cell the best-server power and identity, redundancy count, line of sight and coverability. The engine is validated against a parabolic-equation solver, ray tracing and analytic solutions. Swapping Deygout for Delta-Bullington, or adding terrain noise at the level of the published height-error map of the DEM, moves the coverable class on under 1% of a mast's disc in the mean. With every candidate active, 90.5% of the disc is coverable at 1.8 GHz, 59% at 5.855 GHz and 10% at 25.375 GHz, or 84, 43 and 5% after the measured 3-4 dB engine optimism. A mast covers about 90% of its visible area within its budget-set range, and no band is terrain-limited. The nine current Artemis regions are 85-99% coverable at 1.8 GHz and 22-85% at 5.855 GHz. The atlas and candidate table are released with a DOI.
Related
- Solar System Surface Technosignatures: Searching for Signs of Artificial Design on Extraterrestrial Terrain
- The EMA Justitia Probe: Terminator Frame-Based Deployment Orbit Selection and Surface Coverage Analysis
- Terrain-Dependent Generalization Failure in Multimodal Lunar Crater Classification: A Comparative Study Using Optical and Topographic Data
- Euclid Quick Data Release (Q1). XLIII. The Strong Lensing Discovery Engine F -- Bright and low-redshift strong lenses
- Electromagnetic Probes of the Supernova Engine
BibTeX
@misc{santorelli2026lunarrf,
title = {{LunarRF: A Terrain-Aware Propagation Engine and Pole-Wide 3GPP Surface Coverage Atlas of the Lunar South Pole}},
author = {Christopher J. Santorelli and Alexander M. Wyglinski},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.34554},
eprint = {2610.34554},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.34554},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - LunarRF: A Terrain-Aware Propagation Engine and Pole-Wide 3GPP Surface Coverage Atlas of the Lunar South Pole
AU - Christopher J. Santorelli
AU - Alexander M. Wyglinski
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/27
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.34554
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.34554
AB - Artemis surface operations will depend on 3GPP cellular links, yet no public product shows where such links are physically possible across the lunar south pole. We present LunarRF, a GPU system for terrain-aware surface coverage, and the pole-wide atlas produced with it. A footprint engine casts 8192 radial profiles from one of 11,827 candidate masts enumerated by stated rules on the orbit-adjusted LOLA elevation model, takes the viewshed, and evaluates ITU-R P.1812 Delta-Bullington propagation on every profile, continuous through the radio horizon. An order-independent resolver merges the footprints per 20 m cell, making the run shardable and resumable. The atlas covers the disc south of 80°S at 20 m for four SFCG-recommended surface bands and the IM-2 demonstration band, 1.8 to 25.375 GHz, under a stated link budget, storing per cell the best-server power and identity, redundancy count, line of sight and coverability. The engine is validated against a parabolic-equation solver, ray tracing and analytic solutions. Swapping Deygout for Delta-Bullington, or adding terrain noise at the level of the published height-error map of the DEM, moves the coverable class on under 1% of a mast's disc in the mean. With every candidate active, 90.5% of the disc is coverable at 1.8 GHz, 59% at 5.855 GHz and 10% at 25.375 GHz, or 84, 43 and 5% after the measured 3-4 dB engine optimism. A mast covers about 90% of its visible area within its budget-set range, and no band is terrain-limited. The nine current Artemis regions are 85-99% coverable at 1.8 GHz and 22-85% at 5.855 GHz. The atlas and candidate table are released with a DOI.
ER -