@iamrbf wrote:
Hello to all! My first post on the Cambium Forums. I have 4ea. of the Cambium 90 Sectors with the Smart Antenna's and the EPMP 2000 Radios deployed on a 100 foot tower. We are VERY impressed with the performance of the network. We are doing front to back settings on our Radios using 2 channels at 40MGZ. We accually have the sectors about 70 degrees separated becasue of a mountain on one side of our tower. No problem with front to back. We have them also set to 75/25 and 2.5MS with excellent results. Took a bit of tweaking to come to those settings. At 75/25 and 20MGZ our phone service that is running on top had bad issues with dropped packets since phone does not retransmit. I am pushing as much as 140-150Meg ag. to some of my customers. We use RFE TP-380 antennas with 1000 SM's and also force 200's. Both perform great. For tough to reach customers we use RD-30 and 1000 SM's. VERY pleased with this setup. NOW as to why I am posting on this string: I am going to mount 2ea. 60 degree RFE horns (Carrier Grade) with 2ea. Smart Antenna's, with 2ea. EPMP2000's on one mount 60 degrees apart. We love the new 3.3 release and have all of our radios now set to "Forced Smart Antenna". I am wondering if anyone has used the RFE Horns (In real world) with the smart antennas? I figure it will be about 1-2 weeks before I deploy our first set. I will let everyone know what my results are. My thoughts on this array is: I want to "off load" most of my close, 1-3 mile, customers on these Horns. I will have them about 50-60 feet up on the tower tilted strong down into the subdivisions and the business areas of town. Hoping to put about half our cusotmers on these Sectors to free up the Big Boy Sectors to handle the 6-10 mile customers. Also hoping to run these on DFS Channels. We have one of our MP Sectors that takes several of our Mini Cell Back Hauls running on DFS with no issues. Thanks to everyone for letting me "Rant"! Looking forward to you all's feedback!
Thanks!
Randall
HBE Internet
firstly, welcome to cambium forums!!!
the horns are a different animal, but they do work well.
few big things to note, the sectors you have match the width and similar gain to the smart antennas, the horns do not. it will work to mix them, but be aware of your antenna patterns when depending on two different antennas for operation to a single client.
the horns produce a circular pattern, so if you tilt the horn enough your signal isn't on the horizon, you will need to apply the loss in your beamwidth to match your tilt. if you leave them flat, in close and near expected edge of the horn, you may end up in a dead spot again because of its round shape. you very likely at some point will see a CPE with a poor downlink, but great uplink as well as possibly reversed because of the shape difference in the beam partterns of the two antennas.
the wider the angel of the horn, the less gain it has, this is especially important in the DFS area, you have 2 different restrictions to watch, conducted power and ERIP. if you pick the wider horns, you won't be able to reach your ERIP limit, reducing your overall system reach.
the horns excel at cleaning out of sector beam width noise. as does the smart antenna. but you've got a catch 22. the horn likely has a better FTB than the smart antenna. so if you've got noise on the back side of your tower aggravating it, the horn may be your better uplink choice, and the flipside if your noise is in beam width of your horn, the smart antenna will likely be the better choice.
the horns have gotten extremely popular with the unsyncable radio systems like ubnt because the radios themselves can't stop from interfering with each other (GPS) and they've somewhat improved that with the prisim stuff, but not exactly a lot. this isn't a problem cambium suffers from because they've done what no other 802.11 company has... still. made GPS work correctly.
in my opinion for what you are wanting to do, either use the 30 degree horns, and use 2 to cover your 60 degree area, or add just one more sector antenna and smart antenna.
your idea will work, but you'll likely fall a little short of what you are allowed to use ERIP wise witch is why i'm suggesting to stick with the sector, or use two of the tighter horns to maintain your sector gain.
if you decide to go with that particular combination please let us all know how it goes for you! I've used a couple 30 degree horns but i have not mixed them with smart antennas.