November 24, 2011

How Many Radio Options Are You Juggling?

Balancing cost and performance is a tough act for most operators dealing with telecom networking, especially when it comes to equipment procurement.  Getting all the bells and whistles can sometimes result in having a lot of options to choose from.   Often times microwave users have to juggle with a variety of radio options that suit a particular site requirement, for example, having to select between low power or high power radios to meet varying distance or system throughput/gain needs.  Depending on location and licensing requirements, this may even translate into different products types for different frequency bands.  More products result in more spares to maintain in inventory, along with added support and maintenance, inevitably leading to higher costs.

To help address this challenge, Aviat recently unveiled the industry’s first universal outdoor unit (ODU) to support software- defined base and high power modes in a single ODU, with Aviat’s unique Flexible Power Mode (FPM) capability.  FPM allows operators to optimize both cost and performance, minimizing their overall total cost of ownership, by paying for the power they need only when needed.  As a result, operators can procure a single ODU for multiple locations and via a simple software licensing mechanism, remotely adjust the transmit output power to meet the needs of a particular site.  No need to spare multiple radios, nor deal with the operational burden of managing and supporting a variety of product options.

Additionally, operators can apply this flexibility to migrate from legacy low power, low capacity radios to a high power and performance ODU  to support much greater link throughput, without having to change their installed antennas. This minimizes both their CAPEX and OPEX while migrating their network from a legacy low capacity TDM microwave link to a high speed Ethernet one.

So while juggling may still be a well needed skill to survive in Telecom, Aviat is reducing the load when it comes to microwave networking. Click here to find out more.

Errol Binda
Senior Solutions Marketing Manager
Aviat Networks

Related articles

• Hybrid Microwave for Wireless Network Backhaul Evolution (aviatnetworks.com)