High Performance Wireless Networks, WISP meeting Ghana, Africa, Aug 2021

In the meeting with local WISPs in Ghana, Accra, we talked about high performance wireless networks - how wireless networks can beat the fiber!

Sure, fiber latency and maximum aggregate throughput are unbeatable. But, it is not these two parameters only that make or break a technology. The wireless compliments fiber, instead of competing with it. There are 3 components that enable 5 GHz (or any frequency) wireless networks operate with fiber stability and speeds:

1. High Beam Efficiency antennas (   • Inside Wireless: Beam Efficiency Defi...  )
2. Antennas with high frequency stability of parameters
3. Balanced H/V pol performance

Beam efficiency (BE) is an antenna parameter quantifying the amount of sidelobes (SLs) it has. It is the ratio of the energy contained in the main lobe to the total energy an antenna radiates. Its vales are always between 0 to 100%, where 100% is the best case. Here, 100% of the energy an antenna radiates is in the main lobe, so antenna has zero sidelobes.
The smaller the BE is, the more SLs an antenna has. The SLs transmit and receive noise to other devices in wireless network increasing the noise floor the radios are working with. Higher noise floor means lower Signal to Noise ratio (SNR) and lower overall throughput and unstable wireless network. This results into WISPs not being able to deliver the services they sell to their end users.

Frequency stability of antenna parameters is important especially in WISP networks, because the RF radios leverage wide bandwidths. Ideally, an antenna has identical performance regardless of the frequency it works at. Patch array (PA) sectors, typically used in WISP industry have very unstable main lobe of the radiation pattern (including SLs) which reflects on unstable coverage of the network seen by the end users as inconsistent internet connection performance. Frequency stability of horn antenna sectors is unmatched, if the antenna is well designed and manufactured. This ensures stability and reliability of the sector coverage and satisfied customers.

The radiation pattern and maximum gain of sector antenna is ideally stable over the whole useful bandwidth. Similar story here - PA sectors do a poor job in this regard as well, unfortunately. Horn antennas have completely identical performance of horizontal and vertical polarization due to the rotational symmetry of the antenna structure. Changing the polarizations thus results in identical performance - yet another bit adding to the overall stability of the network performance when using horn sector antennas!

0:00 Introduction
4:56 Wireless VS fiber tradeoffs
7:16 The Problem
11:24 Components of Wireless Network Stability
11:48 Beam efficiency
21:04 Gain & Radiation Pattern Stability
24:29 H/V Polarization Balance
26:29 Practical tips: Stabilizing wireless network
33:48 Gain VS SNR tradeoff
36:28 Colocation miracle
38:09 Summary

#RFelements #SymmetricalHorns #AsymmetricalHorns #Ultrahorn #Ultradish #TwistPort #SaveSpectrum #RejectNoise #growsmart #WirelessNetworks #UbiquitiNetworks #CambiumNetworks #MimosaNetworks #Mikrotik #antennagain #bandwidth #beamefficiency #RFnoise #RFspectrum