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IP Radio STL

C

ChiefOperator

All-

One of my AMs has been having occasional outages with it's program loop (weather and copper thieves). I need a back-up. I've installed plenty of STLs in the past, but the talk about the 5ghz radio links has me interested. I've read some other posts in which stations are using them.

The station is about 6 miles out with somewhat of a LOS. For those who have done this, how is it working out? Is anyone using one as their primary STL. And what about interference. How did you overcome that?

Thanks for any suggestions or field reports.

-CO
 
The only problem I ever had with a 5.8 gHz radio link here in the states was the fact that it's not a protected service...meaning that anyone can interfere with you. Beyond that, the ones we used in Afghanistan worked most of the time, over tremendous distances, and never had a problem outside of an occasional military jammer. Use the radios with a barix instreamer/extremer pair, and you would have a decent backup link for very little cost.
 
I haven't tried one of these, but it's worth mentioning that I own a tower with wireless Internet on it. They use a 5ghz license free link with 2' dishes at each end and a 'radio' mounted on the tower. CAT5 feeds the Ethernet to the ground. The tower end is 160' AGL and the other end is on a water tank at 110'. It never fades and (brace yourself) the path length is 34 air miles. The fresnel zone at 5gigs is very small compared to 950.
 
I failed to mention the name...Ubiquity Airgrid systems are the best, as they include the antenna and radio/POE for around $110.
 
Use a pair of nanostation m5 with a pair of Barix 500's for pcm 44.1.work great. Make sure you have CLOS.Cause when it rains and the winds blows the radios sound like talking robots been there done that.Had to move mine up the tower.

I like the airgrid zach mentioned.also ubiquiti has 3.65 licensed(Just paperwork,no biggie) if unlicensed scares you.You can scan for channels and interference to get a good channel.good luck..
 
zachmorton said:
I failed to mention the name...Ubiquity Airgrid systems are the best, as they include the antenna and radio/POE for around $110.
Click to expand...
I assume they have delay and can't be used in situations where live talent speaks into a mic and expects to hear their voice come back over the air? That pesky delay remains the best reason to stick with 950mhz composite STL's when possible.
 
I assume they have delay and can't be used in situations where live talent speaks into a mic and expects to hear their voice come back over the air? That pesky delay remains the best reason to stick with 950mhz composite STL's when possible.
Click to expand...

The IP link itself has a minimum delay, the problem is in audio-to-IP encoding and decoding. I would never suggest a Barix boxes as they sound pretty bad (to me) and they add huge amounts of delay. Other boxes with for example AAC Low Delay encoding that also allow minimal buffering to be set (such as Telos Z/IP One) would do a better job. Best would be to use linear PCM.

I'm preparing to do the project where we would send Axia Livewire stream directly over such PtP bridge, no encoding and decoding. The console at the station's studio is Axia Radius and the Livewire output stream from it would go straight into one side of PtP bridge. If the station had a newer Omnia processor (which all have Livewire ins and outs), they could go straight from the other side of PtP bridge into processor and voila! The link delay should be about 1.5 ms in this Livewire scenario.

And it's fully digital, uncompressed (24bit/48k) audio, no modulation/demodulation processes inserted such as with analogue STLs, no possibility for noise or interference to get into the signal (such as with analogue STLs), no loss of modulation and overshoots either and processor can be controlled over such PtP remotely as well.

However, the PtP link (units) have to be of good quality and have stable latency and thruput to be able to sustain intensive, low-latency Livewire traffic.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
As chief stated this is for one of his AM's.I'm sure he's looking for the most cost effective way to do this.The Barix 500 boxes doing PCM 44.1 sound fine.You keep knocking that product.Lots of solutions here and a budget range of low to high. Same for IP radios..Never hurts to hawk those Telos and omnia products..(no offense intended)
 
zachmorton said:
The only problem I ever had with a 5.8 gHz radio link here in the states was the fact that it's not a protected service...meaning that anyone can interfere with you.
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate about the interference issue?
 
Unlike 950 service, you would be required to accept any interference, whether accidental or not, on your signal. Just like with 2.4 ghz wireless, you're kind of at the mercy of how many are out there. The nice thing about the Ubiquity radio is that you can use either horizontal or vertical, and have a choice of channels available, even half-channels, so you have a place to hide. You can also hide your SSID, so nobody knows you're even there, at least for now. We found by using vertical, it cut down on the interference we got tremendously. I plan to put up links between our studio's and transmitter sites in the near future as well, mainly for telemetry, but also for backup and backhaul links.

As he said, he was looking for a backup situation, not a full-time link, so I would imaging the barix solution over airgrids would work fine in a part-time scenario. The system we had in Afghanistan was using the Ubiquity Bullet M5 radios with Digigram Iqyoa IP links...no delay whatsoever, and reliable. Of course, if you were going with Iqoya, you might as well go ahead and get starlink or some other high end stl.
 
One thing that I forgot to mention is that the Ubiquity radio's have a 100 meg throughput, so you can pass 44.1 linear audio with no problems even approaching the overhead limit. Where you run into trouble is when you are using the link as an internet link at the site, and telemetry (I kinda like our ARC-Plus systems). However, in selling it to management, it's a no-brainer. I can totally eliminate our phone bill at the site with the one-time cost of the equipment. So even if you're not using it as a full-time STL link, it comes in really handy in the middle of the night trying to get a user manual or information about a problem you may be having, or in my particular case, controlling the processing and levels and monitoring them on the transmitter, along with studio control. Also, we are planning on VOIP over the same link, so you still have the phone available. The possibilities are limitless.
 
Folks-

Thanks for all the great ideas. I didn't know that one could get a licensed 3.6ghz link. I thought those were only for an established WISP, no?

Also, I understand that there are products out there that are better than the Barix solution, but I'm looking for a low cost simple back-up only. Thanks for the other suggestions though.

Is anyone using one of these radio links as a Primary STL??
 
yes, had the setup i described on air as primary on an fm almost 2 years now,No issues at all.Sounds great. will have to check on the 3.6, connections i have can get me one.should i ever have issues with the 5.8,that would be my next choice.as zach mentioned there are lots of work arounds.the tower i'm on has broadband wireless and ubiquity products all over it.
 
oldiesstation said:
yes, had the setup i described on air as primary on an fm almost 2 years now,No issues at all.Sounds great. will have to check on the 3.6, connections i have can get me one.should i ever have issues with the 5.8,that would be my next choice.as zach mentioned there are lots of work arounds.the tower i'm on has broadband wireless and ubiquity products all over it.
Click to expand...

That's impressive. So zero downtime running 24/7? No problems with interference on the 5.8ghz links? I had a look at the Barix 500.. Looks nice
 
Barix works well for AM, we have one that is on our ptmp wireless network along with many other internet customers and it works great.

Barix units can be touchy, not as forgiving as something from Comrex, etc.

3.65 is "licensed lite" Basically, commission collected licensing money for a nationwide blanket license, about $300 for 10 years.

They require the licensee to register location of every unit, thats it. frequency coordination and interference problems are the licensee's problem. This is why I have not made use of this band.. We have a competitor in town that has throws up 3.65 ghz radios all over and doesn't even have a license for them.

If you go with the barix 100 units, I have never been able to make them do 44.1 pcm, only 32 or lower. they will do 48 in mp3 no problem, at a high enough bitrate that it sounds good but I can still tell a difference. always run PCM where possible.
 
Thanks alot. I'm looking at the Barix 500 using PCM. I would like to use something a little better, as Goran Tomas mentioned. But I have to keep costs way down for this project.

I'm also a huge Mikrotik fan, so I'd like to use a Mikrotik radio. However, since UBNT seems to be the choice among folks here, I'll probably give one of them a try.

Thanks
 
UBNT products are very decent and reliably. Also much depend in what environment you place link. So you can use vertical or horizontal placed antenna, or channel in-between to avoid possible interference with other 'links'. Grounding is also one of inportant things!
If someone is not satisfied with standard ubnt products, - http://www.ubnt.com/airfiber ;) But also price is bit higher.

-Miktotik (router) is good thing, but not needed for this simple link. You need point A and B .. and connect them.

Next important thing is what you'll put to encode/decode audio. I finally tested Barix and i must say that i am very disappointed.
bad quality and also big delay.
As Goran said, best is to use linear pcm! No better then that. But problem is what Hardware/software to use.

br
 
oldiesstation said:
The Barix 500 boxes doing PCM 44.1 sound fine.You keep knocking that product.Lots of solutions here and a budget range of low to high.
Click to expand...

Indeed, I do. I can't forgive them the bad MP3 encoder/decoder. At the highest quality settings, the artifacts are obvious and the audio quality is compromised. I'm passionate about audio quality, so for me, Barix doesn't meet that criteria.

That being said, I haven't heard them in the PCM mode, so I will reserve my opinion in that application.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
ChiefOperator said:
I'm also a huge Mikrotik fan, so I'd like to use a Mikrotik radio. However, since UBNT seems to be the choice among folks here, I'll probably give one of them a try.
Click to expand...

Mirkotik also have excellent radios! They are more advanced than Ubiquiti in options and capabilities, but you need to have the expertise to be able to configure all aspects of it. I think that's why Ubiquiti is more popular, simply because it's easier to set-up and use.

However, if you're already familiar with Mikrotik, there's no reason not to try them out as well. I've been looking at RBSXT, but they were not available when I was experimenting, so I went with AirGrids...


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
The Barix 500 on will do 44.1 and 48 pcm linear and sound fine. I don't like MP3 period,even at high bit rates. Goran,we both know good audio. Some say mp3 at high bits rates sound ok,i just never cared for it.ray
 
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