Aviat Networks to demonstrate microwave radio with highest transmit power in the industry

LAS VEGAS—Aviat Networks this week at IWCE 2015 will conduct its first public demonstration of the IRU 600 EHP, which boasts transmit power of 39 dBm—five times the output power of the company’s previous model and the greatest transmit power in the commercial marketplace, according to a company official.

“It's the highest transmit-power digital microwave radio ever built for the commercial markets,” Gary Croke, Aviat Network’s director of marketing, said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “It has over five times more power than our [IRU 600] version, which was already the industry leader in output power.

“What more power means is smaller antennas, longer hops, more reliability and/or more throughput for microwave links. Traditionally, output power has been the most important factor when people look to select a microwave radio, because it has such a big impact on those four things.”

Antenna size is a key factor in total cost of ownership of a microwave link, and the IRU 600 EHP would allow a network operator to replace an 8-foot antenna with a 4-foot antenna with no performance loss, Croke said. Not only can a smaller antenna cost less to purchase, its smaller footprint results in lower leasing rates from a tower company, which represent about 70% of the overall expense associated with deploying microwave, he said.

“Because we can reduce the antenna size, that translates into about $30,000 per link of savings over a five-year period,” Croke said.

In addition to providing high power, the IRU 600 EHP’s power output is the same 39 dBm across all modulations, as opposed to having the typical reduction in power when using higher-level modulations, Croke said.

“That basically means more capacity more often,” he said. “You stay in a higher modulation more of the time, with a fixed reliability or a fixed path link.”

With the IRU 600 EHP, Aviat Networks is changing the output power from 1 watt to more than 5.5 watts—an advance that is reflective of the company’s 50 years of experience in mission-critical communication, as well as some notable technological developments, Croke said.

“We’re implementing a new transistor technology that operates at much higher temperatures, and it allows us to drive the power higher in the same form factor,” he said. “Plus, we’ve also implemented some really cool signal-processing algorithms, which enable the linear capability [for power across all modulations], as well as better power efficiency.”

Announced last November, the IRU 600 EHP will begin shipping this month, with solutions being offered in the 6 GHz and 11 GHz bands, Croke said.

Throughput in the 6 GHz band is 190 MB/s per channel, while the 11 GHz band can provide data speeds of 260 MB/s, with the difference reflected in the different channel sizes within the bands, Croke said. However, those throughput figures should not be construed as an upper limit for a link with the radio, he said.

“The radio supports link aggregation, which is the bonding of multiple channels together to create one fat pipe,” Croke said.

In terms of security, the IRU 600 EHP is the only carrier-grade microwave radio that is certified to meet the FIPS 140-2 Level 2 standard, he said.

Aviat Networks will conduct demonstrations of the IRU 600 EHP at Booth 429 in the IWCE 2015 exhibit hall on Wednesday and Thursday, Croke said.