We are a UAV manufacturing company based in India. We wanted to know if anyone in this forum has used the Mikrotik Radios for transmission of HD signals of standard IEEE802.11n for over a distance of 100kms. Could you please tell me the Mikrotik Radio used, & what was the PA required. I assume that an omni-directional antenna is being used at the UAV & a Directional antenna is being used at the ground (along with a tracking unit). Is a bit-rate of 54Mbps sufficient to accomodate the channel capacity over the specified range ?
With Regards,
Avinash Ravi Koushik
Aurora Integrated Systems
as for relatively fast-moving UAV, presuming relatively narrow-bean, usual for such links - perhaps there was none, even with motorized tracking of dishes and/or AESA/beamforming TRX.
generally any ISM gear, not just WiFI -not really suitable for.
you need something both dramatically more wideband and provide significantly better SnR over such ranges. so sometimes simpler to put naive satcom chip into than mess with conventional links.
but for slow, helicopter-like or especially for baloons(both because low speed and high-altitude, potential for) there was some options perhaps, among most expensive offered.
thats why frequently network of UAV served as communication network for their own kind, retranslating data anywhere other UAVs may need, in any directions, so i result their signal can reach stations, unreachable to orignal TRX UAV.
Thanks a lot for the reply. I am sorry that the post has been duplicated, since I didn’t find it when I first posted. My apologies for the same. I will continue in this thread itself. You have suggested that we use a satcom link, however that is not feasible at the moment & hence the only viable option is the direct communication between the ground station & the UAV. We are using a tracking system for the antenna at the ground & planning to use a 27dBi antenna of this type : http://www.l-com.com/wireless-antenna-24-ghz-27-dbi-die-cast-reflector-grid-antenna-n-female-connector# . We have 5dBi omni-directional antenna on-board. Hence can this cover the range of 100 kms? Also for HD, I assume that the bit rate required is enormous (24Mbps), so suppose we need a SD transmission, is a 3Mbps sufficient. We also plan to use some power amplifiers on-board. However, that also adds a lot of noise to the signal. Will this hamper enormously with the signal quality ? Our UAV is moving at an average speed of 55kmph, so should the doppler corrections also be taken or is the radio capable of correcting it. We plan to use R11e-2PHnD wireless links from Mikrotik, which is capable of delivering upto 1W of output power.