Book Review

Review

Trevor Manning, Microwave Radio Transmission Design Guide, Artech House, Norwood, MA, 2009.

Microwave radio links have provided essential components of telecommunications networks with the first military system (the British No 10 UHF set) operational in June 1944, followed by the first commercial deployments in the 1950s. In addition to long-haul applications between cities, recent back-haul applications for mobile radio traffic have seen an exponential growth in microwave radio networks. In both applications competition from optical fibre has been strong, but microwave radio has considerable advantages for last-mile connections.

Despite a large number of microwave radio links in service, the industry has not really ever taken full advantage of the performance available, particularly in the transition from the old analogue systems to the modern digital systems. The first edition of Microwave Radio Transmission Design Guide was a welcome addition to the libraries of planners and designers, providing good practical advice on the challenge of upgrading from analogue to digital systems.

This second edition includes a considerable number of updates to the various standards, discussions on backhaul capacity limitations, upgrading of networks to incorporate packet-based traffic, details of the latest cellular radio standards (2.5G, 3G, and 4G), and recent changes in spectrum management, as well as the addition of more real-world examples and formulas to assist planners and designers. Of considerable use is the discussion of the issues associated with transition from TDM to packet-based transport systems.

Chapter 1 provides a good introduction to the history of microwave radio and its fundamentals, the RF spectrum and allocation, safety, the various microwave applications (fixed-link operation, utility private networks, TV distribution networks, mobile back-haul networks, and Ethernet enterprise applications) and the planning process. Chapter 2 focuses on link planning, including site location, path profiles, radio (site and path) surveys, repeaters, and frequency considerations. Chapter 3 covers reliability standards including what to aim for, unavailability standards and causes, performance standards, and real-world conclusions. Transport technologies are described in Chapter 4 including backhaul transmission, transport technologies (PDH, SDH/SONET, ATM, and Ethernet), and network synchronisation. Chapter 5 describes radio equipment characteristics including basic radio system block diagram, primary and secondary multiplexing, modems, transceivers, branching, equipment characteristics, power and environmental considerations, and equipment approvals.

Chapter 6 considers microwave propagation including atmospheric effects on propagation, free-space propagation, power budget, and fading. Chapter 7 details antenna considerations: antenna fundamentals, antenna characteristics, types of antennas, feeder characteristics, accessories, and installation practices. Chapter 8 covers frequency planning including frequency regulation, interference, frequency channel planning, frequency reuse, antenna considerations, and intermodulation products. Finally, Chapter 9 covers link design: diffraction loss and antenna heights, multipath fading outages, rain fading, reflection analysis, interference analysis, passive repeater outage, total outage, countermeasures (diversity and non-diversity), and a real-world link design tutorial. Useful formulae are contained in an appendix and there is a list of acronyms and abbreviations.

Microwave Radio Transmission Design Guide is comprehensive in both its technical content and its practical advice. It is well written and is easy to read, clearly reflecting the author’s training background—complex issues are readily explained in a logical sequential structure that greatly aids the understanding of the reader. As a minor criticism, the figures appear to be drawn from the author’s training presentations and are slightly distracting in their varying scales and use of grey-scale—whilst they still clearly communicate the intended information, the book’s illustrations would benefit from attention by a graphic artist.

In addition to making the subject readily accessible to the reader, the major contribution of the book is, however, exactly as the author promises: ‘… to combine a solid theoretical understanding of radio theory and standards with pragmatic and real-world recommendations based on field experience’. It provides good practical advice in a planning domain that is often characterised by planning and design heuristics that are based on analogue rather than digital systems and, in recent generations, on TDM rather than packet-based transmission. Given the paucity of useful books, Microwave Radio Transmission Design Guide is a very useful addition to the library of anyone concerned with microwave radio transmission systems.

Microwave Radio Transmission Design Guide can be ordered online through Artech House at: http://www.artechhouse.com