New Sunsight Instruments microwave path alignment tool enables setting up a link in minutes, not hours
The mobile telecommunications industry is one of the most competitive spaces in the economic landscape. Retaining customers boils down to providing a high-quality network experience, while working to drive down operational expenses like labor costs.
Robust network experience is more than just good RF design as it relates to antenna and microwave deployments; crews out in the field also need to ensure that the actual deployments meet the designed alignment specifications.
Similarly, misaligned hardware needs to be fixed, which means costly crews working until the job is done. Compounding the situation, spectrum is an incredibly expensive, foundational asset that must be used efficiently to help a service providers maximize return on investment.
Orlando, Florida-based Sunsight Instruments brings decades of engineering experience to help customers like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Orange, MTN and others make the most out of infrastructure and spectrum investments by enabling techs to align antenna and microwave links quickly and easily using field-tested tools.
Building on its antenna alignment expertise, Sunsight Instruments showcased its new microwave path alignment tool during the recent CTIA Super Mobility expo in Las Vegas, Nevada.
CEO Tony Wattwood gave RCR Wireless News a breakdown of the device: “This particular new product uses a paired set of these devices and real time calculates the required path between the microwave dishes and gives the user visual cues how to align the system exactly. The advantage of this is it minimizes tower time, cuts your labor costs and you get a quick and accurate result.”
In this video, Wattwood demos the new tool live from the CTIA show floor, and also highlights how rugged Sunsight Instruments’ products are with one device operating perfectly in extended 180 °F conditions and another device working for days with water constantly running over it.
Wattwood offered a look at the easy to use visual interface, which displays both target azimuth and actual azimuth allowing for fine alignment work to be done quickly in the field. The system automatically calculates the alignment requirements for point-to-point, short-haul and long-haul microwave links. One of the truly unique features is that the units communicate with each other to allow installers to see exactly what the other installer is seeing even if he is 150 miles away.
The unit has a battery life of eight to nine hours and charges in an hour-and-a-half. There are two models: The ATT-15 weighs 4.5-pounds and the AAT-08 weighs 5.4-pounds, and the only tools that view both GPS and GLONASS satellites for quicker azimuth reading. The devices have 8 GB of memory and output data in PDF, CSV, HTML or encrypted formats. Find out more about the Microwave Path Alignment tool here.
Sunsight Instruments Vice President of Business Development John Vetter summed it up in a recent article: “Engineering a mobile data network for the highest-achievable system throughput – while minimizing the potential for interference – helps network operators realize optimum network performance, increase data throughput, and reduce time to positive financial return. Unfortunately, many antenna sites are misaligned, resulting in operators losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Given the attention paid to RF system design, and the money invested in spectrum, how does this occur, and how can it be corrected? And the real question is – how much is unknown and uncorrected RF antenna misalignment costing your company?”
