3 Types of Microwave Propagation and the Horn Antenna
- September 18, 2012
- Antenna diversity, Antennas, China Basin, Dick Laine, horn antenna, microwave, microwave propagation, Principal Engineer, Radio Head Technology Series, Radio Heads, Radiohead, San Francisco, Space Diversity
Horn antennas on the roof of a microwave relay station near Madison St. and 17th Ave, Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington State, USA. (Photo credit: Vladimir Menkov via Wikipedia)
Between any two microwave radio antennas, there is one direct ray and multiple refractive/ reflective multi-path rays. In the eighth and last installment of our Radio Head Technology Series, Aviat Networks Principal Engineer and master storyteller, Dick Laine, relates how restrictive tower rules for San Francisco’s historic China Basin Building required fine adjustments of a horn antenna to resolve reflective rays from the surrounding bay.
As Dick tells it, to accommodate a Space Diversity arrangement, one horn antenna on the building had to be hung upside down. During the installation process, the alignment for the upside-down diversity antenna created a reflection point 3 miles out into the bay. Because of this installation, the performance was horrible, but at the time no one knew why. For example, when a little speedboat or anything larger went through the reflection point, there would be an outage as the signal was interrupted. There did not seem to be an obvious fix to the alignment issue. The horn antenna did not have a way to check the alignment on the horizontal with a bubble level.
To find out how Dick solved this antenna mystery, register for the Radio Head series (it’s free). Then to put it all in context, Dick goes over Huygens’ Principle as it applies to microwave signal diffraction. And if you ever wondered what happened to periscope antennas, Dick provides some key insight! Tune in to find out!
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