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ajm8127

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  1. They are close. The release which supports 10 MHz carriers on the 65 MHz radio is in testing now with market trials tentatively scheduled for late summer. This isn't horseshoes or hang grenades, however.
  2. It's mainly a carry over from the days when more CDMA carriers were used, before LTE. You can only do 8 with one RRH because you run into the power limit of the port unless you want to Tx at less that 16 watts (there may be software restrictions as well, not sure). Many second PCS radios and 4 port antennas have been replaced with TDD equipment which makes it easier from a leasing standpoint. In almost all cases both the primary 6 port and secondary 4 port antenna are 65° beam width. The RFS APXVSPP18 and APXVRR13 are the antennas typically used. Any dimensional difference between the two has to do with the lack of 800 MHz elements in the four port antenna. As for the LTE carriers you can deploy, ALU equipment currently only allows a 10 MHz LTE carrier on the older 25 MHz PCS radio. Software does not support 10 MHz on the 65 MHz radio yet. Typically two 5 MHz LTE carriers and up to four CDMA carriers are deployed on a single 65, but if you want 10 MHz, you need a 25 MHz radio. Sites with 10 MHz will use two 25s or a 65 and a 25. This is in addition to the 800 MHz radio. In the not too distance future there will only be three CDMA channels, then they will all go away (in the indefinite future). Many portions of the valley and up into PA along I-81 (BAWA MTA) already have only thee CDMA channels to make room for a 10 MHz LTE channel. Same will happen in Philly MTA by the end of the summer after the swap from B to C block. CDMA is dying a very, very slow death.
  3. Yes, I am looking forward to seeing the Nokia equipment. ALU always seemed a little behind.
  4. That antenna appears omnidirection (maybe pseudo-omni), but a panel antenna could be used instead depending on the coverage target. 2x20 means the radio has two ports capable of 20 W each. Each B41 channel needs to transmit and receive on both ports to create the two parallel paths necessary for MIMO. Typically you deploy one radio per sector. 20 W leaves room for 2 or 3 CA using 10 or 6.667 watts per channel respectively assuming the radio supports more than a 20 MHz bandwidth and the rest of the system supports CA (modem and controller). I would have to image Sprint required at least 2 CA support. For reference the macro site B41 radios are 8x20 watts. They have eight ports to allow beam forming. Also 8 ports allows 8 branch receive diversity which improves the UL performance. UL is typically what limits a cell's size. This is especially important in TDD because you are not receiving all of the time (sometimes you are transmitting) so the average received power is lower than FDD for a given frequency. FDD typically uses 4 branch receive diversity for B25 (B26 uses 2 branch) so there is a 3 dB (twice as much) boost to the UL link budget using 8 branch Rx vs. 4 branch. You still have higher propagation losses at 2500 MHz versus 1900 MHz, but you make 3 dB of that back by using twice an many ports to receive the signal. These mini-macros only have 2 ports (8 cut in half twice) so right there you have a 6 dB reduction in the link budget vs. a macro site 2.5 GHZ TDD. The existing ALU (Nokia) B25 small cells (MCO) use a 2x1W transmitter configuration. You can use technologies like enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) to extend the footprint of the small cell, but the MCO is still limited, and you only have 5 MHz FDD on an MCO. These 2x20W B41 mini-macros should be better in almost every way. If using B41 for BH you would need to use resources of a nearby macro. However, in many cases B41 macros might not be highly loaded because of limitations of the 2.5 GHz frequency so these mini-macors can be use the extend the range. Tim has an excellent article on this. The best BH is fiber, but microwave can be cheaper, and UE relay is cheap and fast to deploy. You could come back and add fiber BH later as capacity needs grow. http://s4gru.com/index.php?/blog/1/entry-404-sprint-enters-the-relay-race/ I've heard rumors of Nokia having these, nice to see one deployed.
  5. Sprint had about a two year head start on B41 deployments.
  6. It's still several months out and it will be interesting to see how it unfolds. Hopefully all the ducks fall into place and things go smoothly. The only stumbling block I can see is lack of communication between interested parties, but this is kind of a big deal so I hope, if nothing else, self-interest prevents that.
  7. I'm sure some of you guys have seen by now, but Sprint is swapping the B band spectrum in the Harrisburg-York BTA with C band spectrum. This is good for a variety of reasons. The first is spectrum contiguity with the G block. This will eventually allow a 20x20 FDD carrier and will more immediately be used as a single 5x5 and one 10x10. With the 800 Mhz channel that's 20x20 FDD plus something like 100 MHz TDD. Once CDMA dies the entire 20x20 in the C/G band will be a single LTE channel along with the lower band 5x5 MHz FDD in B26. Second it removes the inter-modulation problems between channels 425, 450 and 475 in the B block with the G block. Previously you could not assign those lower band B block channels to the same radio port as G block. Third, nTelos has C band spectrum along I-81 in the Baltimore-Washington BTA. What this means is a single voice channel in what is now the Shentel "legacy" network. Currently there is a spectrum boundary between Franklin (A block) and Adams/Cumberland (B block) counties. With the transition to C the boundary will disappear and with it the dropped calls due to inter-frequency hand-off on voice. You can't use soft hand-off on different channels. Soft hand-off is an important feature in 1X Voice. The drop dead date is 07/31/2016. My sources tell me Shentel will no longer be allowed to transmit on B block after that.
  8. I am not a lawyer, but I can tell you B-41 deployments are proceeding in the Harrisburg and York areas. Like Flompholph mentioned B-41 will not be deployed everywhere. Depending on morphology (terrain, buildings, trees, etc.) B-41 coverage can be underwhelming so it doesn't make sense to deploy it everywhere.
  9. Glad to hear you had some success. Using a yagi with higher front to back ratio and higher gain then the panel antenna you have now should improve performance. Moving the donor antenna outside should also help improve isolation and reduce attenuation. Looks like the antennas along with the cable are 75 ohms, so be careful not to buy a 50 ohm antenna. You could try an impedance matching transformer if you wanted a specific 50 ohm antenna, but you may end up doing more harm than good because most use a resistive matching network that has 5-6 dB of loss by virtue of it's construction. I would try placing the panel antenna outside first. WeBoost does appear to have 75 ohm yagis if you decide to try that. Good Luck.
  10. That is not a Shentel site. Their nearest site is at 39.8260°, -76.9620. They are also on the water tanks in McSherrystown and just east of the Hanover square. The water tank in Hanover is about to get TDD LTE. They were just done constructing it recently. Snap some pictures of the new tower if you get a chance.
  11. Interesting stuff, lilotimz I don't know how you find these things. You need to teach me your ways. Regardless, there does appear to be a fiber link between the two 2 port radios using the secondary CPRI channels. I was pretty sure CDMA and LTE can come out of the same port as long as the 25 MHz bandwidth limitations is observed. leozno1, I hadn't posted about it yet, but I was able to get 55 Mbps on that tower at the Penn State York Campus on Thursday. It wasn't on my phone (because it doesn't support CA) so I don't have the screen capture...you'll just have to take my word for it.
  12. That is correct about the 4x40 radio. It is two separate 2 port radios in single mounting bracket. I never really considered it before and would have to do some checking to see how they are configured, but you could be right about one side being technically LTE only if configured for G block. I am not sure if there might be a connection between them. The fiber connections alone could effectively make one side CDMA only and the other LTE only.
  13. For 10 MHz the 4x40 radio is configured in LTE only mode. I am not sure if it would support dual mode or two LTE carriers because I have no experience with those configurations. For the 4x45 I am not sure why ALU didn't support 10 MHz initially, but I have been told it is coming. Might have to do with how Sprint was using their spectrum, i.e. a lack of demand for 10 MHz. Where do you find the information on the hardware certifications?
  14. Concerning the radios, currently 10 MHz LTE only is possible on the ALU 25 MHz 4x40W radio (or so I've been told by ALU). Because of limitations with port power and bandwidth, you will only see 10 MHz on sites with two radios per sector, at least one of them 25 MHz. Sites not meeting this criteria either have to have equipment installed or wait until the 65 MHz 4x45W radio is capable. The eNB itself is limited to 9 LTE cells which works out to three carriers on three sectors. Six sector sites are being deployed, but involve two complete base stations and narrow beam width antennas.
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