What is More Susceptible to Rain Outage, Vertical or Horizontal Radio Signals?

English: A map of the world divided into Inter...

The world is divided into separate International Telecommunication Union regions. In many regions of the world, ITU methods of calculating rain outage are most commonly used. In other regions, such as North America, the Crane model is used more often. (Image credit: Wikipedia)

Ever wonder which antenna polarization is more susceptible to rain outage? Vertical? Horizontal? Which should you use for very long hops?

What would you do besides add extra fade margin to mitigate rain outage? Design a shorter path or use a lower frequency band?

Aviat Networks’ microwave radio guru, Principal Engineer Dick Laine, tackles these tricky questions and others in the latest episode of our Radio Head Technology Series of videos.

Dick also talks about rain outage—as calculated by ITU using a simple scientific calculator, or computer programs (Starlink) that use the Crane model. He goes through an ITU-R availability calculation in one example, noting specifically about rain attenuation calculation above and below 30 degrees latitude. Dick then proceeds into a deep dive on calculating outage when you know the fade margin, followed by a discussion on the Crane rain attenuation model.

Aviat Networks invites our readers to register to be added to our Radio Heads distribution list to get notified of new Radio Head Technology Series releases and links to replays.

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3 Models for Microwave Link Error Performance? Laine Explains

Dick Laine explains ITU-R models

In the second episode of Aviat Networks’ Radio Head Technology Series, Principal Engineer Dick Laine explains ITU-R models for Fixed Wireless Systems.

As most radio engineers know, Vigants calculations, which are discussed in a broadly cited Bell System Technical Journal article, are widely used to determine reliability or error performance for microwave link design. In Video 2 of Aviat Networks’ popular Radio Head Technology Series, which is now available for viewing, Principal Engineer Dick Laine explains how he uses Vigants calculations in conjunction with the three completely separate ITU-R Fixed Wireless System (FWS) models for TDM.

Because of all these models, he likes to use Vigants calculations as a “sanity check” to see that he is close to the correct result for his path engineering plans. The free Aviat Networks’ Starlink wireless path engineering tool can be used to handle Vigants calculations for Aviat Networks’ and other vendors’ equipment.

Can’t wait to hear more of Dick’s experienced views on microwave radio transmission engineering? You can get ahead of the learning curve by registering for the series and get these videos sent to your inbox as soon as they are released.

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