Aviat selected as one of the “best-positioned suppliers” for OpenSoftHaul (OSH) global RFI
- November 24, 2020
- all outdoor radio, Aviat Store, backhaul, Backhaul (telecommunications), dream team, E-Band, Microwave Radio, millimeter-wave, multi-band, multiband, OHS, OpenSoftHaul, Telecom Infra Project, WBH PG, Wireless Backhaul
When it comes to delivering the best in wireless backhaul solutions, Aviat sets the bar high, and now we have been selected as one of the “best-positioned suppliers” for the OpenSoftHaul (OSH) global RFI sponsored by Telecom Infra Project’s Wireless Backhaul Project Group (WBH PG).
TWS successfully trials Aviat WTM 4800 multi-band solution during mid-winter
- August 5, 2020
- Microwave Radio, multi-band, multiband, spectrum costs, spectrum savings, Total Cost of Ownership
TWS technologies, based in the Netherlands, are always looking for new systems to enable reliable connections for their customers, anytime, anywhere.
Safaricom deploys Aviat Multi-Band to dramatically lower their backhaul TCO
- July 23, 2020
- Microwave Radio, multi-band, multiband, spectrum costs, spectrum savings, Total Cost of Ownership
Safaricom, the largest telecom company in Kenya, recently selected Aviat’s WTM 4800 multi-band radio platform to support their 5G backhaul rollout.
Digicel and Aviat establish 166km link in Papua New Guinea between its two largest cities
- July 15, 2020
- 10 Gbps radios, Microwave Radio, spectrum costs, Total Cost of Ownership, WTM 4000, WTM 4500
In 2015, PNG outlined its Vision 2050, committing the government to promote the social and economic development of the nation by that date. National leaders spoke of W.W. Rostow’s five-stage model of development. The second of those stages is all important: the building of infrastructure necessary for the success of all sectors of economic and social life, which includes manufacturing, technology, transportation, and communication.
Design Your Multi-Band Links in AviatCloud
- August 15, 2019
- Antennas, Aviat Design, AviatCloud, E-Band, Microwave Radio, Mutli-Band, WTM 4800
Aviat Design, Aviat’s cloud-based link planning application, supports WTM 4800 E-Band and Multi-band designs. Aviat Design is the industry’s first and only integrated Multi-band link design solution showing a combined view of availability and capacity for the link. This enables easy, fast, intuitive E-Band and Multi-Band designs (all specs included, no pathloss files to download or update, easy cloud access). Popular design tools will require 2 separate link calculations for Multi-Band, and will not result in a combined design for the link, making it virtually impossible to understand the expected link performance or capacity or estimate the proper antenna size. Aviat Design is FREE for use at www.aviatcloud.com.
Q&A on Aviat’s Deal to Become Exclusive Distributor for NEC Microwave and Millimeter Wave in North America
- June 26, 2019
- backhaul, Microwave Radio, millimeter wave radio, NEC
Earlier this month, Aviat announced that they will now be the exclusive distributor of microwave radio for NEC in North America. Aviat is hopeful for the success of this agreement with NEC and looks forward to expanding their suite of services and offerings.
Many have had questions about what this agreement means for NEC and Aviat moving forward. Read through the questions and answers below to learn how this agreement will impact the future of microwave radio backhaul solutions in the US.
Sub-Band Free Radios – Do they really help?
- December 20, 2018
- all-outdoor, Microwave Radio, MTBF, ODU, outdoor radio, radios, RF, RF Performance, sub-band free, TCO, Total Cost of Ownership
By Stuart Little, Director of International Product Line Marketing
In the past years, a few microwave vendors have introduced ‘sub-band free’ RF outdoor units into the market. The main claim of these radios is that a single hardware variant can be deployed in any frequency sub-band, simplifying and lower costs involved with ordering, deployment and sparing of microwave networks.
However, these new radios are not available in all bands and come with a number of limitations, including lower RF performance, larger size, and weight, higher cost, limitations in modulation and channel sizes, amongst others.
Getting it Done! Aviat & Australia Public Safety Networks
- May 31, 2016
- Australia, Aviat Networks, CTR, Eclipse, Microwave Radio, Microwave Router
The public safety market has relied for many years on Aviat Networks to be a supplier of mission-critical microwave backhaul equipment. For example, since the introduction of the Eclipse microwave radio a few years ago, it has been received very successfully in the Australia public safety market. In the last five years, Aviat has sold and deployed thousands of radios (i.e., TRs) in the public safety and life critical radio ecosystem.
“The cutting-edge Gigabit Ethernet and IP capabilities of Eclipse were critical for Australia government agencies,” says Raj Kumar, vice president, sales and services, Asia Pacific, Aviat Networks. “As radio sites rolled out across Australia, Eclipse has enabled efficient deployment of multiple radio carriers in a single chassis—a mission-critical advantage for the simulcast trunking sites.”
Offshore: Microwave Radio use in Explosive Situations
- September 21, 2015
- AATS, ATEX, BATS, flammable gas, FPSO, IECEx Zone 1, Microwave Radio, microwave radios, odu 600, offshore
In oil and gas exploration, danger’s part of the business. In particular, offshore drilling is hazardous (e.g., water inundation, drill-hole blowouts). However, there are acceptable levels of risk, and the industry participants take those into account when they work in the field. But one item that should not be a hazard is the microwave radio installations rigs and other platforms use to communicate to shore.
As all know, microwave radios use a certain amount of electricity in order to operate. And microwave radios, waveguides and antennas emit energy when they transmit. However, onboard an offshore rig or other types of floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels flammable gasses are always present and have the possibility of becoming explosive in the presence of operating microwave radio equipment.
Until recently there were few solutions that could offer protection against the high chance of calamity associated with using microwave aboard an FPSO. Now there is a solution that has passed ATEX and IECEx Zone 1 certifications for mitigating the danger of explosive gasses: the BATS DVM ExP2 has passed both major safety body equipment requirements for operation in potentially explosive atmospheres.
Pressurized radome keeps flammable gas away from Eclipse radios
The BATS pressurized radome enclosed antenna aiming and tracking system (AATS) combined with one or two Aviat ODU 600s connected with a 0.9m or smaller antenna is the only microwave radio solution for potentially explosive atmospheric situations that is certified for use as per these two leading safety regimes. The system purges any potential flammable gas from the radome and once pressurized keeps any flammable gas out and away from the powered microwave radio.
Gas cannot get inside due to the positive pressure of the system. The only way gas could enter is if there is no longer positive pressure within the dome. In that case, everything in the dome is automatically shut off. The system is designed so that there is no possible way for gas to enter the system and any electronics to be active. All microwave and stabilization systems are plugged into a hardwire PDU/alarm system that automatically shuts power off at the source in the event of a loss of pressure.
Only antenna alignment system based on two technologies
Combined with its AATS capabilities to align microwave antennas onboard floating platforms to shore, a BATS-Aviat microwave radio antenna solution can stabilize the microwave signal on a vessel or platform as it moves—due either to sea motion or sway. This system uses two types of alignment technologies: GPS and Signal Quality Tracking Algorithms (SQTA).
With SQTA, the microwave radio beam is tested for the center of the beam, which is aimed directly at the center of the receiver. This algorithm runs continuously resulting in a dynamically aimed system through the BATS sync system, keeping the link on beam as much as possible as the ocean conditions change and move the floating platform. Systems that rely exclusively on GPS to accomplish microwave antenna alignment between ship and shore—and vessel to vessel—are very inexact, achieving lower quality links that may be off-center with only a portion of the signal strength and capacity of an on-beam signal.
In addition, in emergency shutdown (ESD) situations, it is unwise to have heavy reliance on GPS because if the floating platform is powered down, the GPS units will also lose power. A BATS-Aviat solution has its own internal power and using the signal tracking algorithm, it can maintain a last line of communication to shore or a companion rig when everything else onboard is shutdown.
For more information on the BATS-Aviat microwave radio antenna alignment solution, please download the datasheet.
Top Five Criteria for Selecting Microwave Solutions (and Vendors)
- August 18, 2015
- Infonetics, Infonetics Research, microwave equipment, Microwave Radio, microwave specialists, Microwave Vendors, No. 1, Sky Light Research, survey
Photo credit: rustman / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND
The microwave radio business: a small community in a niche market where everybody tends to know each other. However, if your involvement in the microwave backhaul space goes back any length of time, no doubt you recognize the outside influence that industry analyst firms play within the industry. The analysts at Heavy Reading, Sky Light Research, Infonetics and a handful of others play a prominent role in shaping opinions about microwave radio solutions providers as well as the solutions themselves.
Reports from these analyst research firms remain very important even in a tight-knit place like microwave backhaul. They can make or break the business environment for microwave vendors for months—or years—at a time. For example, Infonetics issued its latest “Microwave Strategies and Vendor Leadership” survey results at the end of June. In this survey, 23 operators—from incumbent to competitive to pure mobile—laid bare their perceptions of not only the dedicated microwave specialist solution providers but also the telecom generalists who dabble in wireless backhaul infrastructure as an afterthought.
What emerged captivates the collective commercial consciousness.
Representing 33 percent of all capital telecom expenditures made worldwide in 2014, the 23 operators polled by Infonetics revealed just what microwave-oriented issues interest them ranked in order from most important to least significant. For 2015, the top five considerations in microwave equipment for the operators in descending order are:
- Product reliability
- Price-to-performance ratio
- Service and support
- Pricing
- Management solutions
Among all the microwave specialists, Aviat placed first in product reliability, service and support and management solutions. Aviat also placed first in four other categories.
These other categories that also made the list somewhat lower down in Infonetics’ survey have much importance for operators but had their presence muted due to survey methodology, perhaps. For example, solution breadth and technology innovation did not make the top five but without them the operators’ very strong desires for sophisticated and robust microwave solution features such as cross polarization (83 percent rated very important) and high system gain (78 percent rated very important) could not reach fulfillment.
Infonetics did not survey how operators perceive solution providers on specific product features, but objectively Aviat leads not just the microwave only providers but all microwave providers with its extra high power Eclipse IRU 600 EHP +39 dBm radio and across the board support for XPIC (i.e., cross-polarization interference cancellation) on a number of products.
Full disclosure: Aviat also rated número uno for solution breadth and technology innovation among all microwave specialists.
Overall, Aviat Networks was rated No. 1 by Infonetics’ operator survey respondents.
Your Network Deserves Better than a Regular Router
- January 29, 2015
- backhaul, Layer 2, Layer 3, microwave networking, microwave networks, Microwave Radio, MNOs, mobile network operators, regular routers, routers
Regular routers are bad news for microwave networks. But there is also good news in the form of microwave routers. Photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com / Foter / CC BY
Mobile network operators (MNOs) continue to reap the windfall of the widespread adoption of smartphones. Mobile data volumes spiked initially and still rise quarter over quarter. Along with the demand for more data throughput from their subscribers, MNOs have to accommodate the greater need for responsiveness closer to the network edge.
While regular routers are good at serving Layer 3 services to mobile users on fiber-heavy backhaul networks, they do not do a very efficient job of servicing mobile backhaul networks that primarily use microwave radio. As it turns out, the worldwide majority of mobile backhaul networks are still based on microwave technology, as regularly updated industry research shows.
What can an MNO with microwave backhaul do to bring Layer 3 functionality to its customers that will handle bandwidth constraints, unique aspects of translating router protocols across the microwave interface and failure detection and recovery, among others?
Aviat Networks has published an article in Mobile World magazine that looks at these challenges of regular routers when used in a microwave backhaul network and proposes possible solutions.
Converged Microwave Traffic Emerges in Africa
- January 26, 2015
- 3.5G, 3G, 4G, convergence, emerging markets, enterprise services, fiber optic technology, IP, Layer 3, microwave networking, Microwave Radio, networking technologies, South Africa, tdm, Wireless Backhaul
In South Africa, as in many emerging markets, wireless backhaul has long been a proverbial bottleneck to network growth. Due to cost and logistics, fiber optic technology remains out of reach as a practical solution for most aggregation scenarios, save for urban applications where population density and shorter routes can justify the exorbitance.
Now with the advent of higher speed, higher throughput mobile phones and tablet PCs, higher-order networking technologies are being pressed into service. Standard microwave radio, while cost efficient and effective for crossing far-flung forests, monumental mountains and desiccated deserts with traditional payload such as voice calls and moderate data rate applications, was not designed for the connectivity and capacity requirements of Layer 3 services. Thus, the bottleneck has grown still narrower. Even to the point where standard microwave radio might be hitting its upper threshold for serving mobile broadband.
Technical marketing manager, Siphiwe Nelwamondo, recently sat down with Engineering News, to discuss these issues and the present and future of microwave radio backhaul in South Africa and across the continent. In addition, he delved into how microwave networking is bridging the radio-IP gap for Layer 3 services by running IP/MPLS protocols on converged microwave routers.
As more and more mobile services get pushed out to the edge of the access network, the imperative for Layer 3 will only grow. Even as 3.5G and 4G mobile users who depend on full-IP increase in number, a majority of second- and third-generation subscribers will continue to rely on circuit-based technology. Not to worry, Nelwamondo covers how TDM telephony will be supported in a converged microwave and IP environment.
The full article goes on to discuss how mobile operators will strategize providing enterprise services from the cellular base station with microwave networking, virtual routers and more.