He folks,
I am a happy Canopy 900MHz owner. This stuff is awesome.
Anyway, I have 3 APs on 120 degree sectors on 185’ tower. I have a few customers that are my furthest links that are “marginal” at best.
Here is the data on the first:
From AP:
Session Timeout: 0, AirDelay 319 (approximately 8.88 miles (46893 feet))
Session Count: 37, Reg Count 135, Re-Reg Count 77
RSSI (Avg/Last): 1186/1147 Jitter (Avg/Last): 8/7 Power Level (Avg/Last): -84/-85
From the above SM:
RSSI : 1149
Power Level : -82 dBm
Jitter : 3
This is running hardware scheduling, 1x mode on the SM, soft version CANOPY 8.1.5.1 SM-DES and on the AP. SM is connectorized, attached to stock Maxrad panel antenna. The jitter is a bit high right now as I post - earlier today is was 5/5. Antenna is approx 20" ft on the side of their second story home. Trees in the yard, but open fields for the most part between.
I know I should probably raise the antenna a bit, or perhaps change antennas. I am just not sure which way to go first, or if I could get away with doing one or the other, and not both.
On a side note - I have 2 DMS yagis 11 and 13 DBi. In my limited testing I have not seen a tremendous difference in using these over the 9DBi panel. Any suggestions?
Thanks all.
Look into the M2 17dBi yagis. You need more power. Even with a really clean noise floor, you need better signal levels at the AP. -82 is probably about the lowest power level that will work, and that doesn’t leave a lot of margin.
Make sure you balance your APs, see this post for more information.
The Maxrads are only good to about 7-8 miles. As suggested, a good quality 13dBi or 17dBi yagi antenna is recommended to push the max distance. We have users at 14 miles on Cushman 13dB Yagis with 0 ReReg @ -76dB on AP’s with the 12.5dB integrated antenna.
-84dBi is very close the minimum Rx threshold of the radio. The good news is that you do have a very low noise floor so with a good 13dB or 17dB yagi you should really be able to stretch out your links.
Take a look at the sessions list in the AP and determine the dB level where you have a low number of ReReg counts. i.e. -78dB Re-Reg 2, uptime 14 days. This would be a good minimum RF level target for your installs.
Yes, I did perform the balancing steps on each of my APs.
So, nobody mentioned DBS yagis. Has anyone got any good word to say about them? I purchased from Doubleradius. They look performance worthy…
We’ve used those - they are fine.