Wireless connectivity: top three 5Ghz radios for long distance connections

Wireless is the new darling of the industry and understandably so, everyone is jumping at it. For a successful deployment of a
wireless link using unlicensed 5Ghz radios, you need to understand the equipment that meet your requirements. Apart from line of sight, factors like distance, bandwidth requirement, and interference must be put into consideration when planning for the deployment of wireless links. In this article, I will be sharing with us how to choose the best equipment given some requirements from a client.

Lets assume we have a client that has asked us to help connect two offices that are over 100km apart with bandwidth requirement of about 120Mbps. With such requirements, you need a high-powered radio that can transmit wireless signals across the given distance with data rates that meet the client’s bandwidth needs. Firstly, you need to get the coordinates of both locations, enter them on google earth and analyse. A successful analyses will help determine the altitudes at both ends. This will help you determine how high you have to go at each location to be able to have quality signal. Next is to choose your radios and antennas.
Choosing the right 5Ghz radio
Given the bandwidth requirement and distance, I have two radios in mind. They are the Mikrotik Netmetal RB920 and the Ubiquiti Air Fiber 5X. Both radios are dual chain, capable of connecting to high-powered Ubiquiti rocke dish.
Mikrotik Netmetal

 

wireless radio
Mikrotik netmetal. Credit Datacommespress



The Mikrotik Netmetal RB920 supports 802.11ac with channel width of 20/40/80 Mhz, giving you data rates of up 800Mbps. With the superchannel feature on Mikrotik, frequencies with less noise can be carefully selected to give optimum performance. For long distance links with huge bandwidth demand, using a pair of Mikrotik Netmetal on a pair of 34dbi Ubiquiti rocket dish will get the job done.
Ubiquiti Air Fiber

Wireless 5Ghz radio
Ubiquiti Airfiber 5x

 

You may like: Best practices when configuring Point to Multi-point on Mikrotik.

 

The Ubiquiti Air Fiber 5x is quite suitable for long distance links. It can be deployed to successfully connect sites that are up to 200km apart, provided there is the existence of line of sight between them. It is dual chain, making it suitable for deployment with the rocket dish. Though strict on frequency utilization, the Air Fiber 5x can provide data rates of up to 500Mbps when deployed on point to point links, using frequencies with less interference.

Ubiquiti Rocket Dish 34dbi

Wireless 5Ghz radio
Ubiquiti Rocket M5

 

The Rocket dish can be used with the Rocket M5, Netmetal, and Air Fiber 5x to produce high data rates on long distance wireless links. I chose this solution because it is less expensive to replace any damage component like the pigtail instead of replacing the entire radio.
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4 thoughts on “Wireless connectivity: top three 5Ghz radios for long distance connections”

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