Hi all, looking to setup 2 PTP 6GHz links with 4600c radios. one link (4km link) will have x1 3ft dish and x1 2ft dish and the other link (2.8km) will be 2ft dish on both sides. What antenna would you recommend?
Using upper 6 or lower 6 for frequency? Cambium pucks or 3rd party?
Antenna selection is based on path losses to overcome.
If the path is clear linenof sight with nothing within a 20 degree wide cone from each end then all you have to account for is free space losses. In 6ghz, you have a max EIRP of 36db so the higher the gain of antenna the lower the tx power will be. However your reciever and antenna gain are the more important part.
I would run a linplanner on this link to get an estimate of the path losses and see if the standard 25db antenna will be sufficient for your needs. If not you can play with different antenna gains to see which combination will provide you the throughput, power level and meet any wind loading issues you may have.
@Douglas_Generous Thank you for your reply, appreciate it. We are looking at the Radio waves antennas but was wondering if anyone has a cheaper solution than radio waves for a 3ft and a 2ft 6ghz antenna? When inputting one 3ft RW antenna on one end and a 2ft RW on the other I have 121.82 dB Total Path Loss
System margin = path loss - (antenna1 gain + antenna2 gain) - “wanted rssi” - tx power.
Example
SysM = 121.82 - 65 - ( 34 + 28) = 121.82 - 65 - 62 = -5.11
You have a 5db fade margin or your expected signal will be -60dBm
I am currently testing LinQ Antennas parabolic in 5ghz ( responsive to 6080mhz but with 4db loss and 1.95VSWR)
So far the bench testing is showing promise!
Hello DigitalMan2020
For antenna considerations, NetPoint NP6-DP antennas are available.
which are available in:
https://www.ispsupplies.com/brands/netpoint-antennas/netpoint-6ghz-antennas
and WAV
https://www.wavonline.com/products/netpoint-np6-dp-3ft/p-241613/
Without a doubt, there are many nice 2ft and 3ft antennas == there will be a lot of recommendations in this topic.
My personal experience has been with Jirous antennas (they are local) and I can’t say a single bad word. I’ve been involved with 20-50km shots.
Also, I wanted to say there are couple of guys from antenna vendors here, one of them already spoken 
you really really really want to check posts from Mr.Alvarez and his videos on Youtube. Those guys have climbed “a couple of towers” and if there is one picture to sum it all, it most likely would be this one :
Check the throughput. If that is not enough, I would like to point your attention to DISTANCE at which those numbers were achieved.
I assume you are not regulated by the max 36db in your region?
that was not me - I took that screenshot from different topic on this forum (whisper : I can’t tell you which David it belongs to).
Obviously, that link has nothing in common with 36dBm EIRP, it was much higher than 60dBm.
Much more than reality for 99.9% of users here on forum, it’s just a showcase of technology.
Tried creating an account to check out pricing but no dice. when verification code sent I inputted said code but it kept giving an error, tried multiple times, same results
What settings are you using for the radio pair?
We’ve had some pretty unhappy latency with TDD PTP, much better with WLR but with much reduced throughput.
I wouldn’t run TDD ptp unless you needed sync options for collocation OR if you have a really long distance link that is beyond what ePTP is capable of. In most cases, operators are best off using ePTP mode… which produces the highest throughput and lowest latency. I would avoid using WLR mode as it’s depreciated and no work has been going into it in a long time.
It should be noted that you aren’t going to be able to do a link like this in the US, due to EIRP limits.
Sure, I understand all of that. My point was that you aren’t going to get a signal of -39 on a 10km link in 6ghz under US EIRP limits. Using 0.9m dishes, your signal is going to be more like -60, best case, and you’ll get more like 1Gbps out of it.
I am curious what the gain would be on a 2.4m dish, I’m sure that will get you a bit closer (it’s still not going to get you anywhere near a -39 though), but a 2.4m dish also isn’t going to be realistic for most wisps - don’t get me wrong, it’d be a nice option to have, but I can only think of a couple of our towers out of 150+ that we could actually put something like that big on, even if we wanted to.
Hello @David_Dean1
In what frequency is it selected? Thanks
They’re using unlicensed 6GHz.
Ok. Just want to know if it performs well on higher frequency closer to 7ghz since @David_Dean1 antennas support higher frequencies
You can demand changes all you want, and I would fully support that, but until the rules do change (which they probably won’t), we do need to at least attempt to abide by the rules that are in place.
My personal opinion, is that 6ghz part-101 licensed links should be phased out, and the AFC should be improved to allow for higher powered 6Ghz PTP links. Just don’t allow any new licenses or renewals for part-101 links in the 6ghz band, and in 10 years all of the incumbents will be gone, or better yet, allow an exception for existing licensed radios to continue operating under AFC rules, after license expiration, even though they lack GPS hardware, etc. Unfortunately, there would (understandably) be a lot of resistance from existing license holders.
I’m not sure who’s “gaslighting” here, but anybody that’s publicly advocating blatantly ignoring EIRP limits should be ashamed of themselves. It makes the entire industry look bad, and will hurt us all in the long run.
It’s not really true that EIRP limits penalize gain. Without EIRP limits, I can just crank up transmit power as high as a want to compensate for using low-gain antennas. EIRP limits force me to use higher gain antennas, since increasing receive gain is the only tool that I have to increase the signal level.
I would like to see something along the lines of the point-to-point EIRP exception that exists in the 5ghz bands, except tied more directly to antenna gain/beamwidth, rather than only applying if it’s PtP and not PtMP (technically, you can run an omni in 5ghz and the PtP exception would still apply), but having no EIRP limits, or even just significantly higher EIRP limits would be a disaster.
The purpose of EIRP limits is to try to keep noise levels somewhat reasonable, so that everybody has a shot at the spectrum being useful. Using highly directional antennas does reduce the problem that EIRP limits are trying to address, but it doesn’t completely eliminate it.
Completely ditching EIRP in favor of a flat transmit power limit would cause problems. If we stuck with the current 30dBm transmit power limit, that means that I can now throw a 13db omni, and be blasting out 43dBm EIRP, or if we sectorize it, you could easily get that up to 50dBm on an omni-directional system. That would have the practical effect of making noise levels so high in a lot of areas that it would simply make a lot of stuff that currently works fine non-functional. If you set the transmit power limit lower than that, for example, dropping it down to 23dBm to compensate, then you’re needlessly causing problems for systems that are currently working fine using low gain antennas, and using larger antennas isn’t practical.
The better solution would be a point-to-point rule similar to what we already have in the 5ghz band, but rather than making it only apply if a system is point-to-point, tie it directly to antenna beamwidth - something like “for every degree beamwidth is reduced below X degrees, EIRP may be increased by X db”. Granted, that would still leave some room for abuse by allowing systems with a massive number of sectors, but if the starting point was, say, 25 degrees, it’s unlikely it would be much of a problem.
I agree that there’s plenty of room for improvement in the existing rules, but EIRP limits, in general, are not a bad thing.
