Name: RF elements Products Overview Webinar, Jan 2022
Uploaded: 2025-01-19T02:27:15.000Z
Duration: 47 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi, I'm Tomasz Walensky and welcome to our product overview webinar on the whole portfolio of RF elements products.

Before we start, let me just remind you that there is the question and answer part in the webinar tool where I encourage you to write down your questions, which you can write anytime during the webinar.

And if I notice them, we will answer them right on the spot because eventually this webinar is for you and we're here to really clarify any questions you might have.

So our product range covers antennas, integration platforms, and brackets, but today we'll mainly speak about the antennas because obviously they are main product line and a little bit about the integration platforms at the end.

So the product map you see shows our antennas organized according to the beam shape, connector interface, and gain.

So the beam shape is changing in a vertical direction.

So the symmetrical antennas are in the top two lines, and the asymmetrical are below in the third line.

And in a horizontal direction, the gain is changing and increasing from left to right.

So the antennas with the low gain are on the very left.

And as you go progress to the right, the gain is increasing.

But before we go to the antennas themselves, I will speak a little about the twist port and twist port adapters, which are displayed right here.

And understanding twist port will help you understand the overall advantages of that ecosystem compared to the traditional coaxial interface.

So twist port is RF elements own proprietary waveguide connector that connects the radio with an antenna.

So first, because it is a waveguide connector, twist port introduces practically zero loss into the system, which is very important to achieve excellent RF performance and deliver the maximum power from the radio to the antenna and eventually providing the furthest possible coverage.

The second advantage of the twist port is that it combines the radio mounting and RF connection into a single and easy to use interface.

So it is extremely easy and safe to operate.

And twist port is not only RF connector between the radio and the antenna, but actually it mounts the radio on the antenna at the same time.

So when you insert and twist the radio, it locks automatically and stays mounted.

And unlocking of the radio is equally easy.

So you just twist the outer ring of the twist port on the antenna, reverse the movement and the radio is released.

In our radio design, which we consider a sort of a reference, which we set back in 2014, we removed the pigtails and integrated a transition from the waveguide to the radio directly into the circuit board.

So the radio can then be attached to any twist port antenna while introducing practically unmeasurable loss.

And this is why we consider twist port to be truly revolutionary interface, introducing a whole new ecosystem built on the advantages of the waveguide as a type of transmission line and at the same time also excellent mechanical design, which enables an easy connection with virtually zero loss RF performance.

So the twist port adapter solves a very simple task of converting the coaxial radio interface of third-party radios into a twist port male interface, and it enables intuitive connection of both the radio and the antenna.

And twist port adapters are easy to use and have very low loss as well.

Now you can see on the animation what's inside a typical twist port adapter.

Now the coaxial cables that are connecting the waveguide to the radio, and these are high quality cables with semi-rigid shielding.

So the cables are integrated in the antenna body, I mean in the adapter body, sorry.

Because of that, you do not need to bend, connect or disconnect the cables over and over.

And this results into a very stable and lasting performance really.

So the rest of the twist port adapter body is just designed to accommodate the most popular radios used in the WISP network, since most of the radios have different body shapes, we have a number of twist port adapters to fit them.

And all the adapters I'll show you on the following slide are compatible with every twist port antenna.

So you don't have to worry about whether you will need a separate twist port adapter for each antenna.

No, every twist port adapter fits and works with any twist port antenna.

So the twist port adapters have three types of connection at the side of the radio.

First is the most common radio interface is a pair of SMA connectors.

And the radios with coaxial output are connected to the corresponding adapter by simply sliding the radio in until you hear a click.

So the second type is that, you know, the few radios have a waveguide output and assembling a few parts together converts the third party waveguide output to twist port male connector as you see in this example.

And finally, many microtech radios come as a bare PCBs without any enclosure, in which case you need to insert a whole PCB into the adapter to make it work.

And it is important to emphasize and remember that the twist port adapter works, any twist port adapter works with any twist port antenna.

The adapters are specific on the side of the radio.

Yes, that's because of the different shapes of the third party radios.

But on the side of the antenna, there is always the same twist port connector, which is compatible with any twist port antenna.

So once you have the right adapter for your radio, you can be sure you're all set and you can connect it with any twist port antenna you have.

And we have twist port adapters for four major radio brands in the WISP industry.

So Cambium, Mimosa, Ubiquiti and Microtech.

And all of these adapters are really easy to use and provide really reliable and safe radio installation and removal.

So for Cambium, we have two adapters, the TPA-EPMP in the top line and the TPA adapter E2K in the bottom.

So the one on the top is compatible with the EPMP1000 radios, both the client and the access point station and obviously the newer EPMP3000, which also has the client and the access point version.

The TPA adapter for E2K is working with the EPMP2000 as well as the newer EPMP400C, which is the recently released 802.11ax radio from Cambium.

So the TPA-PATH in the top left corner is compatible with the rocket PRISM-5AC, both first and second generation, as well as the AirFiber 5X and 5X-HD and also the newest LTU rocket.

The TPA, the twist port adapter for the ISO station in the lower left corner is compatible with the waveguide radios from Ubiquiti.

So ISO station M5, PRISM station and ISO station 5AC.

And we also have adapters for older Ubiquiti radios, such as rocket M5 in the top right corner and the rocket 5AC-Lite with the twist port adapter R5AC in the lower right corner.

For Mimosa radios, we have three adapters.

So the TPA-C5C compatible with the Mimosa-C5C radio, then in the middle, the TPA-C5X compatible with Mimosa-C5X, which is a waveguide radio from Mimosa.

And for Mimosa-A5X, we also have a separate adapter called TPA-A5X.

And for those of you who are using the MikroTik radios, we have two adapters.

So TPA-RBP in the lower line, which has a plastic body and TPA-RBC, which has a full metal body that offers a better protection of the radio from changing weather and the surrounding noise.

And both of these are compatible with the Routerboard 4, 7 and 9 series, as well as the M11.

And finally, for those who prefer using twist port antennas with third-party radios, or for which we might not have a custom-fitting adapter, we have a connectorized twist port adapter available with two SMA connectors to which you can plug any radio with coaxial output, albeit a SMA output or an N-connector output.

And since it's a lot to remember, which twist port adapter fits with what radio, we have prepared a cheat sheet for you for a quick reference.

Now you can download this cheat sheet from our webpage in the download section.

It's a PDF and you can either print it or just forward it to whoever needs the information and to have it at hand.

So horn sector antennas are by far the most effective technology to deal with RF noise and unlicensed networks.

So while the traditional sector radio, it's pretty much in every direction, which you see on the animation on the right side, the horn radiates only in the direction of the main lobe.

Now this is the essential advantage of horns.

There's zero side lobes radiation pattern.

Now since side lobes collect and transmit the noise, getting rid of the side lobes equals getting rid of the noise.

But simply saying an antenna has zero side lobes is somewhat vague.

It's like saying, well, I drove really fast instead of saying I drove 200 kilometers per hour or whatever the speed might be.

Now is there a measure of the amount of side lobes an antenna has?

And it is the ratio of the energy contained in the main lobe to the total energy an antenna radiates.

In other words, it says what part of the radiated energy is contained in the main lobe.

And from that, meaning that the higher the beam efficiency is, the less side lobes an antenna has.

So the maximum beam efficiency is a hundred percent, which is the best case.

And the closer the beam efficiency gets to zero percent, the more side lobes an antenna has.

Beam efficiency makes comparing two antennas in terms of side lobe performance extremely easy.

In this example, the symmetrical horn has beam efficiency of 94%.

So only 6% of the power it radiates is in the side lobes.

And a typical patch array sector has beam efficiency 69%.

So the remaining 31% of the energy it radiates is in the side lobes.

And clearly 94% is more than 69%, which therefore the symmetrical horn is way better antenna in terms of noise suppression.

And the rest of our horn sectors are no worse by any means.

In fact, the average beam efficiency across all our horns is 93%.

Ultrahorn, for example, has beam efficiency of 99%, which makes it the best antenna in terms of noise suppression on the West market, in our opinion, since it's really only 1% short of perfection in terms of noise suppression.

So co-locating increasing amount of patch array sectors is always problematic.

You see a gradual decline of the network throughput and stability until you arrive at a point where even a single additional sector kills the site completely, which is shown in the right side of the animation.

Now with horns, this problem is practically non-existent.

Now the zero side lobe radiation pattern enables predictable dense co-locations without any degradation of the network performance.

Now since they don't have any side lobes, they don't collect or transmit the noise in its surroundings.