www.nera.

no

Preface

Ive been involved with radio for ages. My career started when I was a teenager, growing up in Norway. I set up an antenna to receive Radio Luxembourg (1.440 kHz) on my fathers ancient Tandberg Slvsuper 5. I stretched a 30-metre copper wire from our house to the nearest hill, and spent rainy days lying on the sofa listening to rock-n-roll. That winter we had a huge thunderstorm. You can guess the rest. My father had to replace his beloved old Tandberg and I learned my first hard lesson about radio. Luckily, radio links have come a long way (literally!) since then and so have I! Ive now been invited to share some of my hard-earned knowledge with you. I hope you enjoy this guide.

Introduction

This book is for you, even if you have no experience whatsoever of radio relay planning and want to install a link today. The intention is to give you a brief introduction to the mysteries of radio relay planning, so that you will be able to design and bring into service a radio link of your own. The focus of this book is on high frequency equipment, 15 GHz and upwards, systems such as Nera CityLink, which has become a potent competitor to fibre optic and leased lines in enterprise networks. By reading the following pages you will become a competent radio planner. This will certainly pay you back since radio gives the least headaches per kilometre. Just install it and forget it.

How to use the book

Youll find the information has been organised into chapters with the most important topics covered first. The chapters may be read in any order, so it is up to you where and what you read first. I have also taken the opportunity of adding in some anecdotal stories to clarify a point and lighten the read.

p l a n n i n g

f o r

d u m m i e s

Icons
This icon marks useful hints for the planning of radio links.
This icon appears alongside topics that cover possible dangers to be avoided. Topics marked with this icon are advanced subjects containing valuable information worth knowing. This icon marks topics included to answer some common questions and add a little spice to the guide.

4 Further reading
There is much more to radio relay planning than can be covered in this guide. If you wish to cover the subject in greater detail, NERA Telecommunications offers a more comprehensive publication entitled Planning Line-of-sight Radio Relay Systems, by Ingvar Henne and myself. This is also aimed at readers who need basic engineering information on the subject. Further information is available from the reports and recommendations given by the ITU-R (International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication), in particular the Recommendation ITU-R P.530-7, Propagation data and prediction methods required for the design of terrestrial line-of-sight systems. The web site at www.itu.ch will help you to find and order the recommendations you need. There are also a number of published works on radio wave propagation and radio relay planning; see the bibliography at the end of the guide.

Radio Relay Systems

What are they?

The main purpose of a radio link is to transport data and voice traffic from one place to another. The radio link uses the air as the transport medium to send encoded electro-magnetic waves. A typical link consists of two radios and two antennas separated by a distance from a couple of hundred metres up to about 20 kilometres. Usually each radio is split into an indoor and an outdoor unit with a cable in between. The reason for doing so is to ensure maximum output power.

p l a n n i n g

f o r

d u m m i e s

How they work

The data and voice traffic is fed into the radio either using an electrical or optical line. In the radio the digital signals are coded into analogue signals and converted to microwaves with a typical length of a few centimetres. Microwaves are used because they are able to propagate high bit rates safely through the air. The microwaves are sent using a highly directive parabolic shaped antenna. At the other end the signals are received and restored to the digital format. This works both ways, simultaneously, of course. Effectively, the link can be looked upon as just another fibre optic cable, but it is less expensive, easier to install and can be relocated fast.

Line of sight

You cannot bend microwaves

Have you ever installed a TV antenna? If so, you may have noticed that it is possible to receive a signal even though you cannot see the TV transponder. The reason is that the electromagnetic waves have the ability to bend around the terrain when the wavelength is long compared to the height variations of the terrain. However, microwaves, which are only centimetres in length, are small relative to the surroundings and hence do not have this bending property. In order to establish a radio link you must have line of sight between the two radio position sites.

I have seen the light

The simplest way to determine whether you have line of sight, is to use your own eyes or binoculars. If the other site is not easily spotted, a mirror with a diameter of 20cm or less can be used for verification. Position yourself at your chosen site and a colleague at your target site. Use the mirror to catch the sun and reflect it towards the target site. To steady your aim, point the suns rays at the ground, then move the mirror carefully upwards until the rays hit the target site. A mobile phone or walkie-talkie will help you and your colleague communicate to determine whether the rays were clearly visible at the target site.

p l a n n i n g

f o r

d u m m i e s

It is usually best to use the mirror at the lowest situated site since it is much easier to spot and direct the reflected ray to something that is visible against a background. It is worth remembering that the sun is simplest to catch and redirect at the most northerly site in the northern hemisphere and the most southerly site in the southern hemisphere. If, like me, you live in a place where the sun does not shine that often, you can use a camera flash instead to ensure line of sight. A normal camera flash is easily spotted up to about 10 kilometres. When setting up a link you should try to avoid transmitting over flat areas or water. If you do there is a possibility of having a reflected signal in addition to the original signal which can disturb the communication. If you have to transmit over such areas, you should try to conceal the antenna from the reflection point or point the antennas slightly upwards to minimise the effect of the reflection. When planning radio relays, it is common to use terrain profiles. These are drawings showing terrain obstacles, (taken for instance from a 1:50.000 map) between the sites. On this drawing the Fresnel zone is superimposed in order to determine antenna heights. If the signal path is long, the actual terrain heights have to be increased slightly (mostly towards the middle of the path), to compensate for a minute degree of bending of microwaves in air and also for the curvature of the earth. This added height is called earth-bulge. As mentioned earlier the radio links transport traffic using electromagnetic waves. Since the wavelength of microwaves is small we can treat the waves as a ray, but we need a little extra space around the line of sight in order to get as much energy as possible from one site to another. This space is cigar shaped and is named the Fresnel zone. The extent of the Fresnel zone varies with the frequency of the signal and the distances from the sites.

400

375 Altitude [m] 350 325 0.0 5.0 Distance [km] 10.0 15.0

The size of the Fresnel zone is a function of the frequency, the path length and the distance from the sites. The illustration below gives the Fresnel zone size at the middle of the signal path.
12 11 10 9 Fresnel zone [m] 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Path Length [km]
10 GHz 15GHz 20GHz 25GHz 30GHz 35GHz 40GHz

p l a n n i n g

f o r

d u m m i e s

Link budget

It is a sad fact that nearly everything in life is limited, and that goes for the transmitting range of a radio link as well. When microwave power is transmitted from one site it gets diluted in the air and is received as a very weak signal at the other end. The signal strength drops with the square of the distance and if the sites are too far apart it is not possible to discriminate the signal from the background noise. In addition radio links are susceptible to rain and that must also be taken into account when designing the radio link. To establish losses and gains a link budget must be drawn. For convenience engineers use dBm in calculating signal power. dBm relates to Watt logarithmically providing a simple calculation (0 dBm = 1 mW, and consequently 1 W = +30 dBm).

10

A Nera CityLink example budget

Output power: +20 dBm Antenna gain: +39 dB Free space loss (10 km, 18 GHz): -138 dB Antenna gain: +39 dB Received level: -40 dBm The lowest power level the Nera CityLink can function with is -73 dBm which provides about 33 dB margin. These excessive dBs are termed fading margin and help to maintain high performance and availability in rainy conditions.

155
40GHz

150 145 Free space loss [db] 140

35GHz 30GHz 25GHz 20GHz 15GHz

11

FREE SPACE LOSS: 135 Imagine that you put up 130 an aerial that transmits power in all directions. 125 The power transmitted will 120 be diluted in the air and the 0 5 10 15 20 Distance [km] power received at a distance (r) will be proportional to the transmitted power divided by the area of a sphere with radius r. From electromagnetic theory it can be shown, (dont ask me how!), that maximum radiated energy from a point source is inversely proportional to the square of the frequency. Putting this together we get a formula for calculating free space loss as a function of distance and frequency. The graph shows the results for the actual Nera CityLink frequencies. ANTENNA GAIN: You may wonder about the notion antenna gain. How is it possible to get gain from a passive device? Has the perpetum mobile been accidentally invented? No of course not. The antenna gain is to do with the way we define and calculate free space loss. In the free space loss calculation, antennas radiating in all directions (omnidirectional) were considered, but microwave 50 antennas with their Antenna diameter parabolic design are able 0.45m 0.60m to focus the power in a 45 1.20m certain direction. The more directive the antenna is, the 40 higher the antenna gain will be. The antenna gain 35 is proportional to the square of the diameter and frequency. 30
Antenna gain [dBi] 18 23 Frequency [GHz] 25

p l a n n i n g

f o r

d u m m i e s

Availability

100

Specific attenuation [dB/km]

10

Rain, showers later. For more than thirty years I have had the resulting pleasure of this weather forecast. Rain doesnt just bother me, it also has an attenuating effect on microwaves. If there is a rain shower in the radio link path, some of the energy will be lost due to scattering and absorption by the rain drops and the signal strength will diminish. The attenuating effect of rain depends on the rain intensity (number of drops and their size) and the frequency of the signal. The rain intensity is measured in millimetres pr. hour [mm/h] and for radio link purposes the intensity measured for 0.01% of the time at a given place is used. When you know the frequency and rainrate for a given link it is possible to calculate the specific Rain attenuation for vertical polarisation as a attenuation. This figure function of frequency and rain rate tells you how much the signal strength will be attenuated in one kilometre with rain.
150 mm/h 100 mm/h 50 mm/h 25 mm/h 5 mm/h 1.25 mm/h 0,25 mm/h

12

1.0

0.1

0.01 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 Frequency [GHz]

13

>140 >120 >100 >90

>80 >70 >60 >50

>40 >30 >20 >10

Rain intensity (mm/h)

The volume and intensity of rainfall varies geographically; both are generally greater along the equator than in the temperate regions. As the rain intensity increases the rain cell size gets smaller and normally only parts of the radio link path are affected.

p l a n n i n g

f o r

d u m m i e s

18 16

20mm/h 40mm/h 60mm/h 80mm/h 100mm/h

By multiplying the 14 specific rain 12 attenuation with the 10 effective path length 8 you get the needed 6 fading margin for a 4 link performing with 2 an unavailability 0 1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 0.01%. Usually you Path Length [km] need a much better performance, so the fading margin must be scaled to obtain the desired unavailability figures.
Effective path length [km] 50 45 40 35 Fade margin [dB] 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 0.000001 0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 Outage probability [%]
A=5 A=10 A=15 A=20 A=25 A=25 A=35 A=40

45

50

14

A = rain attenuation [dB] for 0.01% of the time

The ingredients needed for the unavailability calculation 1. Estimate the rainrate by using the world precipitation map 2. Find the specific attenuation for the given rainrate and desired frequency 3. Use the rainrate and path length to get the effective path length 4. Multiply effective path length and the specific attenuation to get A, the fade margin for 0.01% unavailability 5. Scale the fade margin to achieve desired unavailability

If you are planning a long radio link path you should stick to vertical polarisation. When the rain intensity increases the raindrops get bigger and change from their original spherical shape, becoming flatter due to air resistance. With vertical polarisation most of the energy is in the vertical plane and hence the wave sees less rain than if it were horizontally polarised. The use of vertical polarisation may decrease the outage time by as much as 30% compared to horizontal polarisation.
World record of precipitation

15

I thought that Bergen, Norway, with its two metres of annual rainfall was about the wettest place on earth, but take a look at this graph. In Cherrapunji, India it rains 30 metres a year and in Cilaos, La Reunion 2 metres fall in just a couple of days.

2000 1000 800 600 400 200

50,800 25,400 20,380 15,240 10,150 5080 2540 2032 1524 1016 508 254 204 153 102 51

Rainfall [inches]

100 80 60 40 20 10 8 6 4 2 1 1

CILAOS LA REUNION BELOUVE LA REUNION SMETHPORT, PA D MANIS, TEXAS ROCKPORT, W VA HOLT, MO CURTEA DE ARGES, RUMANIA PLUMB POINT, JAMAICA FUSSEN, BAVARIA

R=

6.6

UNIONVILLE, MD
2.5 2 4 6 8 20 40 60 3 6 9 12 18 24 5 10 20 30 2 3 8 9 12 24

Minutes

Hours Duration

Days

Months

p l a n n i n g

f o r

d u m m i e s

Rainfall [mm]

0.4

75

CHERRAPUNJI, INDIA

Objectives

How good should the transmission quality of the link be? As good as it gets, but there will always be a trade off between quality and affordability. Unless you are planning a large trunk network (which I dont recommend with only this guide as reference!), the availability objectives for high performance links in access networks are in the range of 99.99% to 99.999% of the time. Please refer to ITU recommendations for details on availability if your link is part of a larger telecommunications network.
Availability [%] 99.99 99.995 99.999 Unavailability [%] 0.01 0.005 0.001 Unavailability [min. annually] 52 26 5.2

The bit-error-ratio (BER) should typically not exceed 10-6 for links carrying data traffic (e.g., ATM- or IP-traffic), or 10-3 for telephony. The unavailability objectives usually cover both propagation effects and equipment effects. Yes, even Nera equipment may fail, even though it is highly unlikely. The mutual size of the two portions is more or less up to you, but it is common among administrations and route designers to use 30%-50% of the outage for rain.

16

Frequencies
In order to establish a link you need to select a radio frequency for transmission. If you, for instance, have a radio in the 18 GHz band there are more than fifteen different frequencies to choose from. But you can not just pick a frequency at will, because there may be others already using the same frequency band. Should you accidentally choose a frequency already

17

used by somebody in the vicinity, it may cause interference and as a result deteriorate the transmission quality. Use of frequencies is co-ordinated and planned. Such co-ordination is usually handled by the regulatory authorities or administrations in the various countries and can be a complicated procedure. You must apply for the frequencies you need using application forms which are typically a couple of pages of information about the position, frequencies, transmitted power and other relevant technical details of your planned link.

But, do not despair. When you buy a Nera radio, we will fill in the form for you and plan your net as part of the service. The only thing you have to do is to buy the radio.

Frequency bands are divided into two half-bands, one half-band for transmission, the other half-band for reception. If you have more than one link using the same site, all transmitters and receivers must be in the same half-band. If not, transmitted signals may leak into nearby receivers and cause severe interference.

p l a n n i n g

f o r

d u m m i e s

On the air

Installation, bringing into service or commissioning. Whatever you call it, the name of the game is to get up and running fast. If like me, you only read manuals when you have to, Nera have made it simple. The manual is thin with lots of illustrations, easy to read and right to the point. After you have opened the packages and checked that all items accord to the list, the installation can start. You can begin with either the indoor unit or the outdoor unit. As a nuts and bolts man who prefers the outdoor life, I usually start with the antenna and the outdoor unit. When the units have been installed and cables have been connected it is time for commissioning, i.e. turning on the power. The Indoor unit will respond with the message *PWR On Boot *Please wait... and after a short while the message Starting Application, will tell you that everything is all right. On the cover of the Nera CityLink manual, you will find the NEW Configurator. It is PC software for easy commissioning and configuration of the Nera CityLink. In order to speed up the initial configuration, the NEW Configurator contains a wizard that guides you through the necessary steps. The last thing you have to do is to align the antennas. You do one antenna at a time. A coarse alignment can be done by using line of sight or a compass. The fine alignment is done by adjusting for maximum input power using the outdoor units audible signal or AGC voltage.

18

The ultimate test of manhood

40.00 -45.00 Some years Input level 35.00 -50.00 Rain intensity ago I had the pleasure of 30.00 -55.00 setting up a test link 25.00 -60.00 at 15 GHz to 20.00 -65.00 investigate the 15.00 -70.00 amount of outage due 10.00 -75.00 to rain and sleet. After the installation, 5.00 -80.00 it was time for 0.00 -85.00 antenna alignment Non-linear time scale which is thought to be tricky especially on higher frequencies. My colleagues, who know how impractical I am, decided to let me do the antenna alignment. They stood watching and smiling to themselves. This made me a little uncomfortable at first, but not for long. First of all most links are close to the horizontal due to the relative longer length of the path compared to the height difference between sites. If the antennas are rotated in the same direction, clockwise for instance, the ultimate peek in received power should be easily detected. Armed with this knowledge, a leveller and a power meter, I faced the task (and my audience). To be honest, it was easy. In a matter of minutes the antennas were aligned and I could talk to Hilmar on the service phone. So the joke was on them! Input level [dBm] 12.25 12.30 12.45 13.25 14.04 14.28 14.36 12.00 14.44 15.19

19

And what about the measurements? Well, they were run for a year and showed that the outage was far less than expected and theory had suggested. After doing the installation and commissioning, you will be eager to get on air, but just a little more patience please. First of all you should check that the radio performs as expected. You can use the built-in test facilities in the NEW Configurator to measure the quality. The radio should perform with less than 10 errors in 24 hours.

p l a n n i n g

f o r

d u m m i e s

15.59

Rain intensity [mm/h] (5 min.)

Breaking in a rough guide

Security has never been my strong point. But since there are so many allegations about the lack of security when using radio, lets consider the issue. Imagine that you want to eavesdrop a link. The first thing you need is an antenna, preferably a big one, and an expensive, $99.999, spectrum analyser. In order to get a signal you must be close to the transmitter or in its antenna beam which is usually very unlikely. The next thing to do is to guess the data rate, possible overhead, modulation method, filtering and modulation code based on the received spectrum and get a device that is able to do the decoding. Then, when you have managed to get the digital data, you must unscramble and synchronise it before you have access to the SDH frames. The easiest way to do all this, which can be very complicated, is to get a receiver from the same manufacturer who provided the transmitter you want to eavesdrop. Just looking at the antenna and the outdoor unit can give you a clue. Also a phone call to some engineers in the organisation owning the transmitter can be very useful. In order to extract the information from the SDH frames you need an SDH processor and demultiplexer. With such a device you can get access to data traffic at various rates. Finished? Oh no, now you have to guess what kind of traffic it is. Is it voice, video or pure data? It is hard to tell by just looking at the data stream. Usually it is both encrypted and scrambled. If you should be lucky enough to break the code, you will still face the problems with protocols and language. The conclusion must be that radio for all practical purposes is secure. In fact, due to its complex nature it is even more secure than other competing data transporting media. If you still have an interest in eavesdropping, I think it is better to do that while you are commuting. The diversity in subject, content and presentation will both amuse and amaze you.

20

Bibliography
There are of course a lot of books on radio wave propagation and radio relay planning and the following titles may be of interest to you Giger Adolf, Low-Angle Microwave Propagation: Physics and Modeling, Artech House, ISBN 0-89006-584-5 Hall Martin P.M., Effects of the troposphere on radio communication, IEE, ISBN 0-86341-086-3 ITU-R, Handbook Digital Radio-Relay Systems, ITU, ISBN 92-61-06281-4 Ivanek Ferdo, Terrestrial Digital Microwave Communications, Artech House, ISBN 0-89006-302-8 Townsend A.A.R., Digital Line-Of-Sight Radio Links, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13212-622-2

21

p l a n n i n g

f o r

d u m m i e s

Im singing in the rain Just singing in the rain What a glorious feeling Im happy again Im laughing at clouds So dark up above Cause the suns in my heart And Im ready for love Let the stormy clouds chase Everyone from the place Come on with the rain Ive a smile on my face Ill walk down the lane With a happy refrain Cause Im singing Just singing in the rain

Ever since I saw the first for dummies book in the bookstore, I have considered it a good idea. These books give readers who do not know anything about a subject a fast introduction to the basic facts. I have long been waiting for a for dummies book on planning of radio links. With titles like sex for dummies and narcissism for dummies emerging, I do not have high hopes for a planning book arriving. Well, instead of waiting in vain, I have written one myself and I hope that you will find it interesting as a door opener to the fascinating world of radio link planning.

The book covers the basics for planning radio link in the enterprise network and covers the following topics:

Radio relay systems Line of sight Link budget Availability

Objectives Frequencies Commissioning Security