First time Mikrotik user. Excellent looking product!
I have bought two RB433AH units to test a PtP relay (over 200 miles in total distance) I am attempting to implement for my company. That distance is broken into a series of six relay links (between 25 and 40 miles each) that connect our branch office to our main office. Each tower is connected to the one behind it and the one in front of it with 10ft single-pol Andrew waveguide antennas tuned to 5.9-7.0GHz with WR137 waveguide. So technically the waveguide is a little out of the range for 5.8, but it does work well with just a slight cost in signal loss (which is more than compensated for by the 10ft dish!) We (foolishly) already bought a Trangolink-45 to do the first link (which is why I know it works) but I’m thinking the mikrotik will be better and cheaper than the Trango.
What do you guys think about putting an extra port on the waveguide to add a 5.4GHz link in addition to the 5.8GHz? Would this work or am I looking at problems? Obviously the 5.4GHz is even more out of the “sweet spot” for the waveguide but I’m hoping it would still work and give us extra bandwidth (obviously 2.4GHz is out of the question.) Would the 5.4GHz interfere with the 5.8Ghz?
The link already has a 6.5GHz microwave feed (for video) on the waveguide so that would make three links on the same cable.
How far off base am I?
Any additional thoughts on my project would be welcome. I am planning to use one routerboard per site with two R5H radios bridged together. If I can multiplex the 5.4 with the 5.8 then I would do a RB600 config with 4 R5H cards in nStream2.
I can provide diagrams if it helps with visualization.
Will the radio waves output by the 5.8 GHz radio go into the 5.4 GHz radio? If so, you are going to burn them.
Sounds like you need a band pass filter ($$$$).
You would be better off buying some 3’ dual polarized wide band dishes.
Ok, so maybe that won’t work. Should there be any problem with burn out putting the 5.8 on the same waveguide as the 6.5-7.0GHz frequencies without a bandpass?
I would certainly like to use separate dishes but tower climbers cost far more money than any parts I can install on the ground. Project will never happen if I have to hire tower crews to climb 200-300ft up seven towers, install 14 or so dishes plus cable, and align & peak everything.
I certainly hope you have a diplexer or circulator somewhere, else the 6.5 user may come looking for you soon.
The same hold true for 5.4, though as you mentioned, it is far out of the recommended range. At 6ghz, 137 should reveal at least a 2:1 swr, (power loss of 45%), and at 5.4 it will rise to 2.6:1 (power loss of 80%).
More importantly, if this is in the US, please note the reduced output power that must be observed.
Underbuilding is common and we both under and overbuild on a variety of platforms. It is generally not a cheap proposition due to the additional cavities and what not to isolate each piece of equipment.
Yes, there is a 2 port circulator on every waveguide. One for the 5.8 and one for the 6.5. We recently tested TrangoLink45 units in an underbuild scenario and it worked well without any filtering, etc. Our 6GHz microwave equipment did not suffer any ill-effects… they are old-school analog video microwaves and I suspect they can take whatever the puny 5.8 equipment can dish out. I have another thread discussing this and the problems I am experiencing with trying to underbuild the Mikrotiks here.
Right now, I am ordering some bandpass filters for 5.8Ghz in hopes that keeping the 6GHz signal away from the 5.8 equipment will improve performance of the Trango and help get the Mikrotiks working on the links (can’t afford 7 sets of Trangos for this project.) Though if you check out that thread you will see in my testing of the R5H units I may have blown them up. So there is much left to isolate and test here. If you have any input on the matter I would love to hear it.
As for my 5.4GHz idea, that is a moot point now. I have decided not to get greedy.
