 So, good morning to everyone who decided to join our webinar today. I'm Tom Arzolanski. I'm a product manager with RF Elements. And we can start with the webinar. We will talk about high performance wireless networks and how these networks can actually perform with the stability and reliability of fiber networks. And before we go in, make sure you type down your questions as they pop up in your head. Because if you're like me, I would pretty much forget the question I have if I don't write it down somewhere. But because we'll be answering them at the end of the webinar in your webinar tool there is a question field. So, please type them down from there and we'll get to them at the end of the presentation. So, at RF Elements, our main goal is to help Wisps thrive by helping them to run stable and fast wireless networks through our noise rejection technology with near zero loss radio connection. And the noise rejection is a stepping stone towards massive scalability of wireless networks provided by our wide range of horn sector antennas. Fiber is often thought of as the ultimate solution to internet connectivity. Nevertheless, wireless competes with it easily and it is absolutely within the reach of every single Wisp to offer wireless connection that matches the stability and reliability of fiber networks. While the optical fiber is capable of highest throughput speeds, the wireless is much easier to deploy. So the expenses to deploy the wireless are a fraction of any fiber network. And if the right gear is used for the wireless networks the performance can easily match that of the fiber network. And in terms of the speed, the coaxial or DSL are on pretty much the same level as wireless. And being a Wisp owner, there are much more factors you should consider than just the maximum possible throughput you can deliver. So the speed of the deployment for example is unmatched with wireless. And the ability to connect the new customers quickly can be actually often the winning formula in terms of competing with other Wisp. It gives you that additional edge where you're able to react quickly. So the number one challenge in wireless networks is the RF noise. And especially in the unlicensed frequencies. So spectral graphs like these are very common showing high levels of interference that prevents wireless networks from providing a reliable service. It might be a little better in the unlicensed frequencies but that is only due to the financial barrier to get the license. Now otherwise it's headed in the same direction except a little bit slower. So the poor performance of wireless networks is caused by the immense amount of poorly designed gear. Namely the antennas. The radio link is not only about the radio its performance is just as good as the weakest link in the whole chain. And this whole chain is composed of the transmitter radio, transmitter antenna, receiver antenna and the receiver radio. So if you have a poorly designed antenna not even the best and the most expensive radio out there would make the wireless link work well. These are antennas that are unfortunately still used in the Wisp industry. And I say unfortunately because the patch array sector as an antenna type was adopted from the cellular industry. But it is completely unsuitable for unlicensed Wisp networks. And dishes as well as the patch arrays have properties that make them a problematic servant in unlicensed frequency bands. So the problems these antennas bring are still being addressed by various shields which you can see in the pictures unfortunately with no or too very little success or a success that you might think you have but you're very unlikely to actually point out how much better it performs because the difference is that small. One of the big issues of patch arrays are side loops. On the right you see the top view of a patch array that visibly radiates in every direction. Creating all the side loops that radiate the signal to unintended directions increasing the noise and slowing the network throughput down. Now on the left you see how a horn antenna radiates. And this is how you want a Wisp sector antenna to work. Only to radiate the signal forward in the direction of the main null nowhere else. Besides the side loops there are several other very important antenna performance components to a greatly performing wireless link. So first is high beam efficiency which quantifies the side loops. Second is the stability of the boresight gain and the rest of the radiation pattern. And thirdly the equality of the antenna performance in both polarizations. And we'll go in detail through each of these points. So speaking of antennas having or not having side loops we can go from this qualitative to quantitative comparison and beam efficiency is exactly the antenna parameter that enables it. Saying an antenna has a lot of side loops or no side loops is rather vague. But beam efficiency is the antenna parameter that quantifies the side loops meaning that we get a number. It is the ratio of energy in the main loop to the total energy an antenna radiates. So maximum beam efficiency you can achieve is 100%. In which case the antenna literally has zero side loops because 100% of the energy it radiates is in the main loop. And the closer to 0% the beam efficiency gets the lower it is the more side loops an antenna has. Here is a practical example. This is the radiation pattern of a generic parabolic dish antenna. So its beam efficiency is 40%. This means that the 40% of the power the antenna radiates is in the main loop. The remaining 60% of the energy this antenna radiates goes everywhere else. And since everything outside the main loop is a side loop it goes into the side loops. And because beam efficiency includes all the side loops of an antenna, unlike front to back ratio or any other side loop parameter or metric you might be know, it is, beam efficiency is complete measure of side loops out there. Wisps use a wide portion of the spectrum. But in antenna textbooks beam efficiency is defined at a single frequency and for single polarization. And this is the case actually for most of the textbook parameters. And it is really up to the user and mainly up to the manufacturers to consider whether one should care about the whole bandwidth or just a single frequency point. Since the computational power is much more affordable nowadays than it was in the past, the choice between the wide band or narrow band information about antennas is really a matter of deciding what is important rather than figuring out if we can do it at all. So in Wisps industry it makes perfect sense to average the beam efficiency over the whole bandwidth an antenna is working in. Because Wisps use their antennas in a wide frequency range so it only makes sense that antenna should perform well in the whole bandwidth and therefore we extended the textbook definition of beam efficiency to a number that is the average of the beam efficiency over the whole useful bandwidth of our antennas and over both polarizations. So this turns the textbook definition into a sort of a super parameter if you will. It is way more robust and more reliable measure of the sideload performance than the single frequency and single polarization version or actually anything else out there. With beam efficiency the comparison of antennas in terms of the sideload performance is extremely simple. The higher number wins. That's all. So in this example the ultra horn on the left has beam efficiency of 99%. So only 1% of the power it radiates is in the sideloads. A generic dish antenna on the other hand has beam efficiency of 40%. So the remaining 60% of the energy it radiates is in the sideloads. So clearly 99% is more than 40% which makes ultra horn way better antenna in terms of the noise compression. Probably actually the best on the market. The vast majority of antennas used for sectorial coverage in the WIST networks are either patch arrays or horns. Now the patch arrays have many frequency dependent sideloads so their beam efficiency values are around 60%. Give or take depending on the quality of the manufacturing and the design itself. You have elements horns of symmetrical and asymmetrical have beam efficiency between 90 and 95%. So you can actually also see other horns in the graph too. And this is to highlight that it takes a considerable effort to design a horn antenna such that its beam efficiency is high. The stable and zero sideload radiation pattern and based on that also the performance is actually not a given as soon as you have a horn. But we put a lot of effort into our antennas so we achieve those high beam efficiency values of at least 90%. Similarly with the point-to-point antennas. The patch arrays are again at the bottom of the beam efficiency performance due to the many frequency dependent sideloads collecting and transmitting the noise hurting any and every WIST network. Dishes are somewhat better and generally the bigger the dish the better the beam efficiency becomes. And that is again if the antenna is carefully designed and well manufactured. What is interesting here is the ultra horn. Again its beam efficiency is 99%. Just let that sink in for a second. The ultra horn is only 1% short from being a perfect antenna in terms of noise rejection. So over the whole bandwidth of operation in both polarizations the beam efficiency of ultra horn is almost perfect. Only 1% of the RF signal is in the sideloads. So if you ever wondered if the ultra horn was worth the extra cash compared to a dish antenna. You have a very clear answer here with the 99% of beam efficiency is probably the best performing antenna on the market in terms of the noise suppression. To achieve stable and high performance wireless networks antenna with high beam efficiency. High beam efficiency equals stable and high throughput and reliable connection. Antennas with high beam efficiency ensure that the radio does not collect the noise from its surroundings eliminating the issue of interference altogether. So no longer will the link be at the mercy of the surrounding noise sources. Its noise immunity improves and therefore also the stability reliability of the connection you're eventually providing. Second component of the stable and great performing wireless network is the frequency stability of antenna parameters. The gain of the traditional patch array sector is changing with frequency as seen from this graph on the left. At the start of the 5 gigahertz spectrum it is very low gain and then goes to some nominal value and eventually goes down again at the end of the spectrum. Now this gain characteristic is far from the ideal which is illustrated by the green dotted line where by the ideal we mean that the gain would not change with frequency. So that's why the ideal scenario is illustrated by the flat dotted line at the top. The gain goes for the rest of the radiation pattern. With the patch arrays it changes with frequency a lot. So the many side loops these antennas have create and collect the arp noise. Now on top of that the main loop is also changing with frequency and this results into fluctuating coverage of a sector which at your end results into unstable coverage and noise lord of what the radio sees with changing the channel. So as you're changing the channel on your radio hoping to leverage that cleaner bit of the spectrum you might be seeing on the spectrograph you're always up for an unpleasant surprise when using the traditional patch array sectors exactly because of their frequency instability. Symmetrical horn antennas are quite different. Now you see that the boresight gain is near ideal which really sets the horn sectors apart from the traditional antennas. Changing the channel makes virtually no difference whatsoever to the signal levels you see when using a horn sector. Same goes for the rest of the radiation pattern of horns. So the frequency stability of horn radiation is unmatched. You can see it changing a little bit with the frequency but the resulting change of the coverage area is almost non-existent. This is another bit adding to the overall stability of a wireless network as a whole. So use antennas with little to no frequency dependence of the radiation pattern. Horns are the most stable ones regarding this criterion from all the antennas you have at your disposal. The third bit into the puzzle is the equality of the radiation patterns when switching between the polarizations. Highlighted by the red solid color you see the mismatch between the polarizations of a traditional patch array antenna. Now this mismatch results into similar effect on the network performance as the gain instability. When switching between the polarizations the signal strength changes in an unpredictable way. Horns do beat the odds here as well. Actually it's not the odds but the physics of the horn antennas that make it possible for the polarizations to be exactly the same. Which is what you can see here on this slide. There is only one line in the graph which might be a little confusing but it's because the horizontal and vertical curves are completely overlapping. Now this is an ideal situation because both polarizations have exactly the same performance. So switching between them makes absolutely no difference to the network performance making the connection stable and reliable. With the isometrical horns the story is similar. No difference between the polarizations equals stable and reliable wireless network. Also the ultra horn if you wondered again no difference whatsoever between the polarizations. So the point-to-point link performs with an amazing stability and reliability. So much so that you can actually run your key backhaul links in the 5GHz spectrum despite all the issues with noise that are common when using other antennas. Ultra horn is probably the best performing antenna in terms of noise rejection because of its 9% beam efficiency which really protects your network from vast majority of the noise. And by now you may be wondering how to apply the knowledge you just acquired in practice. Which is what we will show you in the next few slides. So again, beware of antennas with strong side loads. That's the first and very important point. These are the traditional patch arrays which were the first type of sector antennas used in the WISP industry. And in areas with dense population and dense colocation of the customers and competing WISPs you should absolutely try to avoid using the patch array sectors if you can. And here is how it looks. The side lobes and the wide radiation pattern caused deterioration of wireless network with every new customer connected. So here's the problem with side lobes causing instability of wireless network multiplies with growing number of sectors. The side lobes of the neighboring sectors interact with each other and despite all devices on the tower may be even your own. You are not even counting in the potential competitor WISP. The interference problems keep growing until you hit that limit where adding even one more sector or one more customer, connecting one more customer can make the whole network dysfunctional and of course all the way it's very unstable and really at the mercy of the surroundings. The dish antennas which are used mostly for point-to-point applications also have many side lobes. So the physics of these antennas dictate you cannot fully avoid the side lobes altogether. The result of a dish having side lobes is principally the same as with the patch arrays. The side lobes collect and transmit the interference from unwanted directions eventually showing up as a slow network sort of leaving you scratching your head and wondering where is my promised 1 gigabit of the throughput the radio manufacturer promised. So the backhaul links suffer from the side lobes all the same. Regardless if you use dish antenna or directional patch array, the side lobes these antennas have will inevitably lead to consistent degradation of wireless network throughput and even more so if you also have competitors using the same antennas. So using antennas without the side lobes and being with fitting to the scenario is the way to stabilize the wireless network. Because if you do not collect the noise, you don't have to do with it in the first place. And if you only cover the area necessary you're really doing the best thing you can for your customers and yourself at the same time. If you replace even just one patch array sector by a horn or a pair of horns depending on the width of the sector you're replacing or just to sort of ease into the RF elements technology because of course while trying something new you want to be careful. You will see a significant change in performance nevertheless. So not only the horn sectors will perform very well but also the remaining patch array sectors will improve and this is sort of counter-intuitive and sometimes confusing thing about horns. They provide better performance precisely because of the lack of something which in this case are the side lobes. But you can go even further. So the biggest gains and the maximum stabilization you can lose to your network is visible when all patch array sectors are replaced with horn sectors. Now you removed all the sources of noise on a tower and each sector can function very near the maximum throughput of the radio can handle regardless which one you use actually. So stop, you can go from worrying every day and praying that the network doesn't crash and hoping you can still maybe connect this one more person. You can really go to, wow, little to no noise and great stability, great reliability and I can keep adding customers no problem whatsoever. It is really possible with the horn sectors. Replacing a dish antenna with a highly directional horn in high noise areas, the overall throughput will increase and you'll introduce way more stability in the network. As I mentioned before, so much stability that you can actually run your back holes in the 5 GHz spectrum. So horn based point to point links are very stable. This is how horns work, unlike the traditional directional patch array sectors or dishes. But the real magic happens when you use only horns. So no side lobes means no noise and that equals maximum performance of your network. Sometimes wisps who start using our horns and maybe very happy with them, they kind of like to keep it to themselves and do not tell anyone that they managed to improve their network to kind of keep the advantage over the competitors maybe. But in fact, if your competitors started using horns as well it would be good for you too. The less noise everyone generates, the better for everyone. And if you wondered, well, but these horns have really narrow radiation patterns, if I should stay at least on the similar level of gain I'm having with the patch array sectors, well of course you need to segment or split those original patch array sectors to narrow over horn sectors. And if you wonder how densely horns can be installed and still deliver on their promise, you see a clear answer here many. Lots of sectors coexisting on one tower and with excellent and stable performance at the same time. Unbelievable, right? With horns this is daily reality. And these are pictures from our customers, actually not our own. So we rest assured that we didn't manufacture this and they're not the product of a skillful Photoshop graphics person. These are photos from our customers. And horns are, you know, should be looked at as a tool set that allows you to respond and adjust your network to any situation in an optimal way. Now on these images you can see six ultra horns covering distant narrow sector with the 15 degrees beam width and each of them covering one sector. And the middle is a cluster of different horns. The versatility of scenarios you're able to cover with horns is unmatched by any other antenna technology in the Wisp industry. So to give you a short summary, so the three rules of successfully stabilizing and helping your wireless networks perform with the stability and reliability of fiber network are so the first, use antennas with high beam efficiency. The higher the beam efficiency the less side lobes equals lower noise floor, the radio sees and eventually higher network throughput. Second, the second rule is to use antennas which are very stable with changing frequency. So the traditional sectors and their properties, namely the gain and radiation pattern are fluctuating with frequency a lot as we've seen from the previous slides. But with horns this is not the case. They're extremely stable meaning that they stabilize the performance of your wireless network as well. And the third rule is to use antennas with equal performance on both polarizations. So switching the polarizations again might be introducing undesired instability unreliability and eventually headache for you and for your customers. With horns the performance of the horizontal and vertical polarizations is identical. Meaning that the switching between them makes absolutely no difference to the performance of the whole network. So all together horns introduce the stability the wisps are really looking for. And maybe unfortunately because of the chronological or the way the patchery sectors were adopted first into the the wisps industry has caused a lot of resentment maybe against the free spectra, the unlicensed spectra. But that's again as I mentioned at the beginning the wireless link is a chain. You have to consider the whole chain and each link in the chain makes difference to the performance of the whole network. So when using horns you get to the stability and reliability of the wireless network which it should have had since the beginning. Sometimes our customers are not quite sure where to buy our products. So if you go to our web page rvelopments.com and on the top menu you see a stock locator. So clicking that it will take you to a page where you can find the distributors that are nearest to you such as for example myrodistribution. And I would also like to invite you to join our online community. rvelopment.com is our discussion forum which is a forum as any other. You can ask us any question regarding our products. We also announce the events where we're attending there and we also post the recordings of webinars such as this one and so on and on. Of course you can also search through the questions that were already asked if you're not sure about anything. Our YouTube channel has a playlist called Wisp Traveler and there we traveled around the world and interviewed wisps like yourselves about our antennas and what is their experience with our antennas and how they help them improve their networks. Another playlist we have on YouTube is called Inside Wireless and that's a series of short around three minutes videos about all kinds of things from the world of RF engineering. So whether you're an inexperienced Wisp, a veteran RF engineer or maybe you're just starting your Wisp, either way, refreshing your knowledge or getting better understanding of the RF concepts is always useful when running a Wisp network. And we have a presence on most of the major social media. So if you follow us there Facebook is probably the most prominent where we are the most active but we're also on Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn if that's your preferred channel. Well, the webinar is over. Thank you for attending and we'll leave the link to the recording as soon as we have it and have a nice rest of the day.