We have an AP that ranges from 7 to 14 km from the customer CPE’s. This is operating at 2.4GHz. Recently we changed the RF bandwidth from 5MHz to 10 MHz because we are of the understanding that a wider bandwidth allows more data to be moved. The driving force for this was that we recently changed the customer bandwidth from 2 to 4 Mbps.
About the same time this was done, we noticed that many of our subscribers radio receiving strength dropped to very poor levels-- from 60/70 to 70/80 dB levels.
We are not sure that our RF bandwidth change made this problem or if something else has happened. I am asking this question because I seem to remember that the signal bandwidth has something to do with the radiated power of the radio signal. That is, the tighter the bandwidth, the higher the effective radiated power…?
The AP is a RB433AH with a MT R52H 350mW radio, transmitting with a flat panel antenna. CPE’s are mostly RB411’s with the MT R52H radio card in a Rootenna. (and some newer RB711’s) We have had decent results from this combination for a couple of years up to now.
Obviously, the quickest thing to do is to just try to change back to 5 MHz. I don’t want to do this until I have some hard data to back up my conjecture since the change won’t catch all the customers and the few that have their CPE’s turned off will require we roll a truck to change them back over.
Thanks,
Jon.