ePMP TP version 2 testing


Chad

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Our WISP has been using a combination of RFE Carrier Class sector antennas (120 degrees) and 60 degree TP horns. Up until this last week, the TP horns were on the version 1 ePMP adapter. We just got a few version 2 adapters. These finally allow us to utilize channels below 5.4 and they have reportedly better shielding and isolation.  To find out if the marketing claims were true, we started by replacing an existing 60 degree horn with the new TP adapter. At 5.7, SNR and RSSI were pretty comparable. Small improvements but close.  However, we moved the radio to a channel in 5.2 and finally it works with no drop off in performance!  So happy to have the full 5GHz range available.

The next test was to replace a RFE Sector with a 60 degree horn with the new adapter. We are on a mountain with our tower about 1600' above the town. Vertical beam is very important to us.  We had been getting very good SNR and RSSI levels along with good speeds on the sector.  However, we saw a pretty big jump as soon as the horn was installed.  SNR improved by about 10 points.  RSSI numbers improved by about 8 dBi from almost all subscribers. And speeds both to and from the subscribers improved.  Some of this I'm sure is related to going to a 60 degree beam from a 120 - less noise coming in and we are in a pretty noisy environment.

After seeing that performance increase, we took down our other RFE sector on this tower and replaced it with a horn and are not looking back.  The only improvement I would ask RFE to make is add a spot for the magnetic GPS antenna to land on the TP adapter or the horn. We still want to use GPS sync but we now get a bit creative with finding a place to put the GPS puck - where it used to sit on top of the old sectors...

 

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