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Course ID, Duration, and Instructor(s)

B-MICROWAVE, 3 days, David Smith or Max Main (click instructor photo(s) to see their bios)

Course Platform, Materials, and Certificate:

• This is an instructor-led course, taught onsite at Booz Allen’s McLean Campus or an offsite facility chosen by BAH.
• The class will consist of lecture with a lot of interaction. Come prepared to ask questions and participate in the class discussions.
• You will be provided with a copy of the course presentation which will help you remember and retain what you learned in class and apply it on your job.
• Those who attend the full class and complete all of the class work will receive an Eogogics course completion certificate.

Aimed At:

This course is intended to satisfy the requirements of the following Booze Allen certification programs:

• WSE Expert: Tactical Communications (Core)

Prerequisites

You should have an academic background equivalent to that provide by a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and have taken B-PROPANT, an important prerequisite for all WSE programs, or possess equivalent knowledge of the key concepts of RF propagation and fading, antennas, link budget analysis, and RF systems design/deployment.

Course in a Nutshell

Microwave links are a key part of the world’s communications infrastructure. The tremendous growth in wireless services is made possible today through the use of microwaves for backhaul in wireless and mobile networks and for point-to-multipoint networks. For anyone involved with telecommunication and information technology, understanding this technology is of fundamental importance.

In this course you will learn both the technology and applications of line-of-sight microwaves. We will review elements of microwave link design, including digital radio and RF channel characteristics. You will also learn aspects of microwave link control, management, testing, standards, and practical deployment issues. This comprehensive review will give you the tools necessary to design and analyze any microwave link.

Course Outline

• Introduction
  • Microwave and other radio systems: Microwave versus copper cable, fiber optics, and leased services
  • Microwave frequency bands
  • Regulatory matters: Rules, regulations and recommendations; radio licenses and permits; role of FCC or equivalent national agency
• History of Analog Microwave Radio
  • Frequency Division Multiplex (FDM) techniques and hierarchies
  • L Carrier and ITU frequency plans
• Digital Transmission Systems
  • Sampling theory
  • Time Division Multiplex (TDM) techniques and hierarchies
  • North American and ITU digital hierarchies
  • Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy (PDH)
  • Synchronous networks (SDH/SONET)
• Digital Power Spectra and Bandwidths
  • Bandwidth definitions and requirements
  • Nyquist and other shaping
  • Regulatory masks
  • Baseband data signals
  • Filtering and rolloff factors
• Digital Modulation
  • Amplitude, frequency, and phase shift keying (ASK, FSK, PSK)
  • Binary versus M-ary modulation
  • QPSK, Offset QPSK, and p/4 QPSK
  • Minimum Shift Keying (MSK)
  • QAM and Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM)
  • Orthogonal FDM (OFDM)
• Line of Sight Transmission
  • Free space loss
  • Effect of terrain
  • Reflection and diffraction
  • Fresnel zones and path profiles
  • Clearance requirements
• Effects of Climate
  • Refraction and variations in radio refractivity (N factor)
  • Snell’s law and the effective earth radius (K factor)
  • Rain attenuation; specific rain rate and effective path length; ITU rain attenuation model
  • Other atmospheric attenuation
  • Prediction of outage using computer models
• Fading
  • Multipath fading
  • Reflection and diffraction causes
  • Rayleigh, Rician, and log-normal statistics of fading
  • Multipath propagation models; Barnett-Vigants observations; ITU models
  • Diurnal and seasonal variations
• Effect of Fading on Digital Radio
  • Flat versus frequency selective fading
  • Minimum versus non-minimum phase fading
  • M and W curves
  • Flat, dispersive, and composite fade margins
  • Calculation of estimated outage using computer models
• Antennas and Diversity
  • Antennas types and parameters: Gain, directivity, radiation pattern, polarization, beamwidth
  • Waveguide types and characteristics: Rectangular, circular
  • Diversity types: Space, frequency, angle, polarization, hybrid
  • Diversity combining and improvements over non-diversity systems
• Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) Coordination
  • Interference analysis for co-channel and adjacent-channel
  • Carrier-to-Interference (C/I) ratio
  • Threshold-to-interference (T/I) ratio
  • Manual and computer-aided design for intra- and inter-system interference
  • Frequency planning
  • Satellite and other external interference
  • Detailed analysis of a terrestrial RFI case
• Performance Objectives
  • Single link, tandem link, and end-to-end objectives
  • U.S. and ITU standards and recommendations
  • Availability and error rate objectives
  • Measurements of bit error rate, eye patterns, and jitter
• Acceptance Testing and Performance Monitoring
  • Factory tests; BER testing
  • Use of spectrum and link analyzers
  • Propagation instrumentation
  • On-line performance measurement
  • Fade margin testing
  • Fault isolation and performance monitoring
• Path Engineering
  • Manual and computer-aided design
  • Site selection, mapping, path profile generation and analysis
  • Reflection point analysis
  • Selection of components to meet performance objectives
  • Software examples; hands-on exercise designing paths; analysis of problem path
  • Use of digitized terrain data from USGS Digital Elevation Models for path profiles
• Wrap-up: Course Recap, Q/A, and Evaluations
  
  

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