Informational - 5Ghz 450M & 450b High Gain Frequency Changes

Hi all!

I'm generating this thread simply for informational purposes, and what we have found in our experimentation with the 450M/b platform over the past 8 months.

About us: We are a WISP out of the Central Oregon area, NW United States. Our region is rural, and vast... lots of hills/buttes/mountains, etc... RF Environment is DECENT to say the least. Since the area is vast and rural, WISP's flourish here, and we are accompanied by at-least 2-5 other companies on most towers we have presence at. Spectrum is coordinated amongst ourselves usually, but can get dicey at times!

Attached to this are 2 screen shots. One is an AP of ours hosting only 24 units as of current, at 5670 Mhz, 30 Mhz wide. Take note of the Uplink SNR's and overall signal strengths here. 

The second screenshot is of the same AP, same VC's, only difference is the AP transmit frequency. This time, we moved to the 5.1 band, obviously maximizing our EIRP limits. Again, take note of the new Uplink SNR's and Signal strengths. 

We have fought with some 450b units, having issues registering... dropping randomly... all sorts of production network issues. But I imagine these will be no more given the recent change. This is probably no new news to anybody, given a low EIRP band... (We suspected the same, but took some time to coordinate frequencies.)

Mostly, we were amazed by moving to the hotter band, how MUCH better all of the Uplink statistics became. I expected maybe another 5-7 dB gained by each VC, but in this case as you can see... Most increased by approximately 20-25 dB! Also with this came added throughput, most VC's were receiving 65-70 Mbps downlink at maximum. (We are running our ration 75/25) Now most VC's are receiving 120-150 Mbps downlink, aggregates of 165-180 Mbps. 

I loved these 450M/b units at first sight/turn up of first VC... But this made us re-fall in love with the product all over again, and realized our money spent is certainly not in vein. Again, this is more of a informatitive post and success story from our unit and area. 

Thanks for listening to me ramble, and hope this helps some folks in some shape or form.

-Anthony.

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I don't think this is specific to any sort of platform, because obviously with higher eirp limits you will have better signals. Not super groundbreaking here lol.

Ryan, 

You would be correct. The amazement came from the fact that the SM's gained an average of almost 25 dB of uplink signal strength... That's an insane amount... It IS nothing groundbreaking, this is simply sharing information in the respect that these AP's/SM's really need to be in a hot EIRP band to for them to REALLY shine. 

-Anthony.

We have them in DFS bands for very close links (1-2km) and they work pretty well. Just have to be realistic with your expectations and understand your links.

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Ryan, 

Certainly! How is your RF environment in the areas that have DFS AP's out of curiousity...?

Nothing in use, AP's are 150ft in the air, DFS is completely and totally clear. 

The DFS band power limit is +30 dBm. On U-NII-1, the power limit for point-to-point devices is +53 dBm EIRP, while PtMP is+36 EIRP, though conducted power is limited to +30. The uplink is treated as PtP, so the radio can run as loud as it wants to up to +53. A 450 is a very clean transmitter (compared to cheaper ones using WiFi chips and sloppier amplifiers) so it can run close to the nominal limit, without being capped by the need to keep out-of-band very low.