You’ve heard the saying “good fences make good neighbours”. Well, the same goes for symmetrical horn antennas by RF elements. These are a huge innovation, replacing sloppy traditional sectors that bleed RF everywhere, with antennas that produce no side lobes, minimize co-location noise and deliver signals precisely where they’re needed.

See the below pics. The left, “Early Wireless”, shows typical sectors on a tower. The red blotch in the centre is self-interference from radios on the same tower, and the larger rings show 90-degree sectors totally overlapping each other. In a word, it’s a mess. By contrast, the right pic shows those same radios, except with horn antennas that go from 30 to 90 degrees in 10-degree steps. Note how beam patterns are clean and distinct. 

The result is a vast improvement in signal to noise, not only for the provider but for other operators as well. The difference between traditional sectors and horns is some-what similar to cabling in switch rooms. Remember when switches were a rat’s nest of Cat 5 cable? These days, cabling is practically an art. Every wire is perfectly dressed and precisely routed. It’s about sustainable growth, just like horn antennas.

“Disruptive” technology? Absolutely not.

Traditional sectors are disruptive, but horn antennas play nice. Horn antennas are a departure from the early days of fixed wireless, when providers aimed for maximum transmit power and antenna gain, deploying wider sectors than necessary. But RF elements cautions about the correlation between power and noise. Raising one increases the other. And so they advise reigning in power and gain and using precise horns to deliver signal just where it’s needed. It’s a message that’s hard for some WISPs to accept because it seems counterintuitive. But don’t doubt, belief!

Conclusion

Effective spectrum management is a good neighbour policy that helps everyone, and it’s the only way to grow a WISP and maximize value. A major challenge, however, is the lack of uniform standards, and so while most WISPs do amazing work, others run amok with little care for quality, reliability and support. It’s a real concern because poor performance can tarnish the industry, diminish the value of unlicensed spectrum and invite encroachment by big carriers. Let’s not let that happen.

RF elements is bringing real innovation to facilitate growth and recover enormous amounts of wasted spectrum. If you’re a WISP, give them a try, but don’t keep your success a secret. If your competition uses horns, you’ll see your own network improve.

This is a repost of a blog written by David Theodore and originally published here