800 SMR Repeaters

[prophead]

Don't want to start an argument about the negatives\interference issues etc of repeaters....not the point of this question

 

What I am curious about is whether or not old iDen repeaters would work with the new Sprint 800 SMR.  Frequency range is the same so therefore they should right?

 

 

[matt7701]

I'm guessing not because their software only supports the IDEN protocol and not CDMA.  Also sprint wants to eliminate old towers for good and use fewer NV sites to provide coverage.

[jefbal99]

I'm guessing not because their software only supports the IDEN protocol and not CDMA.  Also sprint wants to eliminate old towers for good and use fewer NV sites to provide coverage.

Not sure if it has anything to do with protocol, but channel width.  The old configuration was narrow band 25khz channels for iDen but Sprint got the FCC to reband SMR for wide band 1.25Mhz CDMA and 5Mhz LTE channels.

[bigsnake49]

Not sure if it has anything to do with protocol, but channel width.  The old configuration was narrow band 25khz channels for iDen but Sprint got the FCC to reband SMR for wide band 1.25Mhz CDMA and 5Mhz LTE channels.

 Yes but the repeaters could not just repeat a single channel. They would repeat  a whole bunch of them. Now, my qualm would be is it a pre-rebanding repeater or a post-rebanding repeater?

[amcferrin90]

Your talking two different things, broadband RF amplifier which was the final stage of a site before the antennas vs the actual RF generating cards that produced signal for each channel going into a combiner to get amplified as a whole. The only thing out of IDEN worth keeping was the RF amp and antennas. But the goal of NV was to move the RF amps to the tower top, feed them with fiber and reduce the amount of RF power wasted in the transmission line. Hence the rough +5 dB of gain in signal and better coverage from the site. 

 

The next added benefit was tilt controlled motors that allows the coverage radius of sites to be remotely controlled. They did this to become green(er). It's 2:00 am and 80% of the population is asleep. Raise the tilt on those antennas at night to cover more territory and shut some antennas and amplifiers off since capacity is lower. Now you're saving energy.