What is it?
Apart from site surveys, our engineering team is also highly specialised and experienced in carrying out path engineering tasks. During a path engineering, we mean to find out whether and how it is possible to make the wireless connection between one point and another point (point-to-point links) or between one point and several other points (point-to-multipoint links).
Challenges
Answering the question whether such a connection is feasible is finding out which obstacles there might be between the different points to be connected: high buildings, trees, etc. In other words: is there line-of-sight (LoS) between the points involved?
If that is not the case, it might be necessary to place antenna masts or to use relay points to make a reliable wireless connection possible!
The other great challenge to overcome during is path engineering is the so-called Fresnel Zone. The Fresnel zone is an elliptic sphere volume, between the endpoints to be connected, which does not allow any obstacles in it. Otherwise, reflections and other problems might deteriorate the quality of the wireless connection. Here, it also important to reckon with possible future obstacles or ’growing factors’ such as trees, planned constructions, etc. In some cases, antenna masts can be required to obtain a sufficiently free Fresnel zone.
The calculation of the required Fresnel zone is an additional warranty that the LoS path will be guarded from reflections and other RF effects resulting in a stable and reliable link.
How we proceed
To obtain a reliable prediction on how the planned links need to be set up, our engineers will make sketches of the situation supported with photographic material, height measurements, coordinates, etc. They will therefore use all the most updated hardware, software, equipment and of course their own knowledge and experience.
Multicap will deliver an extensive report with conclusions and recommendations resulting from the Path Engineering. The report is made clearer by means of a selection out of the photographic material and measurement data.