Materials

The materials module provides classes for representing and managing material properties in wireless environments, including electromagnetic and scattering characteristics.

Material

The Material class represents a single material with its electromagnetic and scattering properties.

import deepmimo as dm

# Create a material
material = dm.Material(
    id=1,
    name='Concrete',
    permittivity=4.5,
    conductivity=0.02,
    scattering_model='directive',
    scattering_coefficient=0.2,
    cross_polarization_coefficient=0.1,
    alpha_r=4.0,
    alpha_i=4.0,
    lambda_param=0.5,
    roughness=0.001,
    thickness=0.3,
    vertical_attenuation=0.5,
    horizontal_attenuation=0.3
)

Properties

Property	Type	Description
id	int	Unique identifier
name	str	Material name
permittivity	float	Relative permittivity
conductivity	float	Conductivity (S/m)
scattering_coefficient	float	Fraction of incident fields scattered (0-1)
cross_polarization_coefficient	float	Fraction of scattered field cross-polarized (0-1)
roughness	float	Surface roughness (m)
thickness	float	Material thickness (m)
vertical_attenuation	float	Vertical attenuation (dB/m)
horizontal_attenuation	float	Horizontal attenuation (dB/m)

The Material class supports different scattering models:

Model	Description	Parameters
SCATTERING_NONE	No scattering	None
SCATTERING_LAMBERTIAN	Lambertian scattering	scattering_coefficient
SCATTERING_DIRECTIVE	Directive scattering	alpha_r, alpha_i, lambda_param

# Configure directive scattering
material.scattering_model = Material.SCATTERING_DIRECTIVE
material.alpha_r = 4.0  # Forward lobe width
material.alpha_i = 4.0  # Backward lobe width
material.lambda_param = 0.5  # Forward/backward ratio

The field vertical_attenuation and horizontal_attenuation describe the attenuation properties of the material, and are mainly used in folliage.

MaterialList

Info

For detailed information about MaterialList, see the Core Models API Reference.

The MaterialList class manages collections of materials and provides database functionality.

# Create material list
materials = dm.MaterialList()

# Add materials
materials.add_materials([concrete, glass, metal])

# Access materials
concrete = materials[0]  # By index
metal_objects = materials[1:3]  # Slice

# Material management
dataset = dm.load('asu_campus_3p5')[0]
materials = dataset.materials

# Get materials used by buildings
buildings = scene.get_objects(label='buildings')
building_materials = buildings.get_materials()

# Get objects with a certain material
objects_with_material = dataset.scene.get_objects(material=building_materials[0])

Materials examples

See the Materials section of the DeepMIMO Manual for examples.