I have a new RB/600 running 3 AR5 cards 2 as P2P the other one as a 5Ghz AP including an XR9 which serves our NLoS AP onto one of our towers which is powered by solar 12vDC running at roughly 13.5v output power on a 7/24 basis.
Since replacing the original system with the RB600 AR5 XR9 configuration I see that my 5Ghz clients which used to see signal strengths between -55 and -68 are now running -81 and -90.
The AR5’s came from our original radios- just to let you know.
Is it possible that the reduced Signal Strength is being caused by too little voltage being supplied to the RB/600 board?
I am waiting for a break in the snow and I am going to run AC power cord to the tower and install a 48v DC P/S hoping that will solve the signal strength deficiencies I see now.
You have definately identified what I would deduce is your major problem: Not enough voltage! Years ago we set up RB230s with 3 200mw cards on 12V PVAs. We experienced almost the same exact problem. Our solution was to upgrade to a 24 volt system and we have been running for years now with no problems. BTW, 13.5v would be optimal, but I would venture to say that you are probably dropping to more like 12-12.5V in the early morning hours, not enough to run the board plus 3 cards.
Have you examined the logs? Are you getting frequent reboots, or just wireless disassociations?
Our digital voltage monitor stores our highest/lowest voltage in any 24 hour period to be no lower than 13.5vDC, in the peak 5.5 hours of day time operation our system is outputting 15.25vDC with an average PV current output of 10-14amps.
I find it very interesting though that you did have the same issue on one of your systems also…
My other towers operate at 24vDC, I just haven’t upgraded this site yet, actually all I need to do is change the charge controller to a 24vDC model and add two more Trojan L16H batteries and change the wiring on the panel array.
Since I posted this earlier today I did some other searching here at MT Forum and found that using Regulatory Domain can have a negative impact on signal strength, so I went through all of my AP’s and CPE’s changing them into Manual Tx Power which brought all my -90 CPE’s into -70 dramatically improving performance all-together.
So I will upgrade this tower site PV system tomorrow and migrate to 24vDC.
My logs don’t indicate any disconnects or reboots what-so-ever.
I like the suggestion you made very much concerning remote monitoring, so this is a hardware/software solution then huh?
Very cool dude <@
Interesting to say so. Negative impact… That regulatory domain will actually make you legal, and when specifying correct values, will keep the tx power to maintain the total EIRP of the system within legal values of the official/what MT knows it is official for the country you specified.
But, as you said, it will usually lower tx power on the ap side, to keep it within legal limits.
Am I missing something here… is it no all about watts? Thus, even if you run a 12V system, the amps pulled by the board will be higher, thus all is suppose to be fine?
