MICROWAVE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS AND DESIGN Flashcards
A telecommunication network consists of
customer
premise equipment (CPE), switching nodes, and
transmission links
Four different ways by which we can convey
signals from one switching node to another
- Radio
- Fiber optic cables
- Coaxial cable
- Wire pair
The sizes, capacities, ranges, and operational frequency
bands for ______________ vary greatly
radio systems
Only two system types meet the necessary broadband requirements of the long-distance network
- line-of-sight (LOS) microwave
- satellite communications.
ADVANTAGES OF RADIO SYSTEMS
* Less expensive compared to fiber optic cable
* No requirement for right-of-way
* Less vulnerable to vandalism
* Not susceptible to “accidental” cutting of the link
* Often more suited to crossing rough terrain
* Often more practical in heavily urbanized areas
* Can work as a backup to fiber-optic cable links.
DISADVANTAGES OF RADIO SYSTEMS
* Limited information bandwidth
* Requires licensing
* Greatly affected by changes in atmospheric
condition, acts of nature
Microwave point-to-point communication can be
achieved by a single connection links made by a
number of intermediate repeaters with or without partial payload drop-insert
MICROWAVE BASICS
In microwave basics, the transmitted information can be
voice, data, or
video as long as it is in a digital format
MICROWAVE BASICS
A typical digital microwave radio consists of three basic components:
- A digital modem for interfacing with digital terminal equipment
- A radio frequency (RF) unit for converting a carrier signal from the modem to a microwave signal
- An antenna used to transmit and receive the signal
The combination of these three components is called a
radio terminal
Two terminals are required to establish a microwave communications link, commonly referred to as a
microwave hop or microwave link.
We can feed the data and voice traffic into the radio using
an electrical or optical interface
In the radio, the _________ are coded into analog
signals and converted to microwaves
digital signals
are sent using a highly directive
parabolic shaped antenna. At the other end, the
signals are received and restored to the digital
format
microwaves
microwave radio provides a transmission medium for digital traffic of standard capacities typically ranging from 1.544 Mbps (1T1) to 45 Mbps (1DS3) in North America, and from 2.048 Mbps (1E1) to 34 Mbps (16E1) based on ITU standards.
Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy (PDH)
microwave radios are typically used for high-capacity backbone systems
Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) / Synchronous
Optical Network (SONET)
providing in the neighborhood of 1Gbps of throughput, are increasingly being used as well
New Ethernet microwave radios
Radio links may be established between any two
points within the line of sight and, depending on the frequency, geographical region, and rain statistics, the typical link distance can be up to
25 mi (40 km)
For the longer microwave link hops, additional
measures have to be taken to ensure required
reliability of the system
(e.g., space and/or frequency
diversity).
which are only centimeters (or inches)
in length, are small relative to the surroundings and hence do not have the bending property.
Microwaves
Therefore, to establish a radio link, it is important to have _______ between the two radio position sites. One or more radio paths connected in tandem form a microwave system.
radio LOS
The radio stations between two terminal stations are called
repeater stations (active or passive)
Active repeaters can be
_______________ when the signal is only filtered and amplified, with or without down and up conversions (e.g., in some analog FDM
systems),
nonregenerative
or they can be _________ when, in digital
applications, the signal is demodulated and remodulated before transmission to the next radio hop
regenerative
implemented without any active
radio components (e.g., two directional antennas connected back to back, a reflector, and so on) are also utilized
Passive repeaters
is a functionality provided in analog and
digital repeaters, where only radio-system specific control and service channels, and possibly part of the payload, are made available for local traffic and system management and maintenance
Drop-insert
The most common use of Fresnel zone information on a profile plot is
to check for obstructions that
penetrate the zone.
The ______ the frequency, the narrower the Fresnel zone and, consequently, the more vulnerability to non-LOS effects (object attenuation)
higher
is used to determine obstruction loss, and anytime the path clearance between the terrain and the line-of-sight path is less than 0.6F1 (60 percent of the first Fresnel zone radius), some knife-edge diffraction loss will occur
first Fresnel zone (n = 1)
Some engineers plot a ratio of ________ of the first Fresnel zone to add a bit of headroom for the path design.
100 percent
can be described as any criterion to ensure
sufficient antenna heights so that, in the worst case of refraction (for which k is minimum), the receiver antenna is not placed in the diffraction region.
Clearance
can be considered by applying climate-dependent clearance criteria or by properly handling diffraction-refraction fading (k-type fading).
Clearance
To summarize all this, we can say that, for normal propagation conditions, the following two clearance criteria have to be satisfied:
* The antenna must have clearance of 60 percent or greater at the minimum k suggested for the certain path.
* The antenna must have clearance of 100 percent or greater at k = 4/3
Radio transmission engineers introduced the ________ to compensate for the refraction in
the atmosphere.
Earth-radius factor k
Applying appropriate k-values to the true-Earth
radius, an ____________ is geometrically
obtained and, consequently, straight rays
equivalent-Earth radius
Using the _________________, ray paths
between transmitters and receivers near the Earth’s surface can be approximated by straight lines over a spherical Earth.
effective Earth’s radius model
The model is most useful for terrestrial paths and is not used for paths through the entire atmosphere.
effective Earth’s radius model
is defined as the factor that is multiplied by the actual Earth radius, E, to give the effective Earth radius Ee
effective Earth radius factor, k,
The mean Earth radius is in average
6,371 km.
For standard refractivity conditions, k = ????,
and this value should be used whenever a local value is not provided. It is important to keep in mind that lower k-values will lower the LOS; in other words, they will demand higher antenna heights
= 1.33 = 4/3
is a calculation involving the gain and loss factors associated with the antennas, transmitters, receivers, transmission
lines, and propagation environment, used to determine the maximum distance at which a transmitter and receiver can successfully operate
link budget
The purposes of the ____________ are to generate the carrier frequency that is to be used for the
communication, to modulate this carrier frequency with the desired information, and finally, to amplify the signal so that it attains a sufficiently high power level so that it may travel the desired communication distance to the receiver
transmitter
amplifies the received signal (which is at
this point much weaker than when it was
transmitted), filters out any undesirable signals
(interfering signals) that the receiver picked up and, finally, detects the existence of information in the carrier frequency
receiver
The purpose of ______________ is to interconnect
the antenna with the transmitter/receiver.
transmission lines
Transmission lines between the radio equipment and the antenna may consist of ___________.
coaxial cabling or a
(flexible) waveguide
makes it possible to utilize a common antenna for both the transmitter and receiver. The transmitter and receiver can, for example, be connected to the same antenna either via a duplex filter or a transmitter/receiver switch.
antenna-coupling unit
Together, feeder cable losses, antenna-coupling
losses, and any additional losses (depending on the radio configuration) constitute
branching losses
adapts the generated signal to the surrounding environment (to the propagation medium) and directs the radio waves that are to be transmitted towards the receiving station. When
receiving, the antenna receives the signal from the desired direction and sends it to the receiver.
antenna
is the signal level at which the radio runs continuous errors at a specified bit rate. Specifications are listed for the 10^−3
bit error rate (PDH radios) or 10^-6 bit error rate
receiver sensitivity threshold
is defined as the difference between the transmitter output power and the
receiver threshold. Lowering the system gain will
reduce the fade margin. System gain can be used to reduce antenna sizes or improve the path availability.
System gain (in decibels)
For example, 99.999 percent system availability (five minutes of outage per year) will degrade to 99.980percent (two hours of outage per year) if the modulation is changed from 16 QAM to 128 QAM without recovering the system gain reduction and all other conditions remaining unchanged
The gains from the antenna at each end are added to this gain, with larger antennas providing higher gain. The free-space loss of the radio signal as it travels over the air is then subtracted from the system, and the longer the link, the higher the loss. These calculations result in a _________ for the link
“fade margin”
is the difference between the received
signal and receiver threshold value (or sensitivity) for given BER, typically 10-6 or 10-3
.
Fade margin
is a methodical, systematic, and
sometimes lengthy process that includes the following main activities:
Microwave link design
- Loss/attenuation calculations
- Fading and fade margins calculations
- Frequency planning and interference calculations
- Quality and availability calculations
Prediction models for the purpose of performing
fading predictions are ________ i.e., they are not
founded on theoretical considerations but are only built upon observation and experience.
empirical
often provide a fair description of the fading process for distances and frequencies that lie within the data ranges for which measurements have actually been collected.
Empirical prediction models
The loss/attenuation calculation is composed of three main contributions:
propagation, branching, and
“miscellaneous” (or other) losses.
contribution comes from the
losses due to the Earth’s atmosphere and terrain—e.g., free-space as well as gas, precipitation (mainly rain), ground reflection, and obstacles.
propagation losses
contribution comes from the
hardware required to deliver the transmitter/receiver output to the antenna—e.g., waveguides as well as splitters and attenuators
branching losses
contribution has a somewhat unpredictable and sporadic character, e.g., sandstorms and dust storms as well as fog, clouds, smoke, and moving objects crossing the path. In addition, poor equipment installation and less than
perfect antenna alignment (field margin) may give rise to unpredictable losses.
“miscellaneous” losses
WHAT ARE THE PROPAGATION LOSS?
- Free-space path loss
- Vegetation Attenuation
- Gas Absorption
- Attenuation due to Precipitation
- Obstacle Loss
is continuously growing, and the rate of growth is very important. It is important to include a provision for at least ten years of vegetation growth
Vegetation Attenuation / Vegetation
Vegetation Attenuation
* For the case in which the foliage depth is less than 400 m, the loss is given by
CHECK THE PPT FOR THE FORMULA
- This relationship is applicable for frequencies in the range 200 MHz to 95 GHz
is a radio wave propagation model that
estimates the path loss due to the presence of vegetation on a point-to-point telecommunication link and gives slightly different results
Weissberger’s modified exponential decay model, or simply, Weissberger’s model