Advantages of Microwave

Microwave was used during World War II in military applications, and when it was successful in that environment, it was introduced into commercial communications. Microwave was deployed in the PSTN as a replacement for coaxial cable in the late 1940s.


As mentioned earlier, twisted-pair and coax both face limitations because of the frequency spectrum and the manner in which they are deployed. But microwave promises to have a much brighter future than twisted-pair or coax. Many locations cannot be cost-effectively cabled by using wires (e.g., the Sahara, the Amazon, places where buildings are on mountaintops, villages separated by valleys), and this is where microwave can shine. In addition, the microwave spectrum is the workhorse of the wireless world: The vast majority of wireless broadband solutions operate in the microwave spectrum.

Note that the discussion of microwave in this chapter focuses on its traditional application in carrier and enterprise private networks, but there are indeed many more systems and applications to discuss, and those are covered at length in Chapter 13, "Wireless Communications Basics," and Chapter 16, "Emerging Wireless Applications." This chapter focuses on the general characteristics of microwave and its use in traditional carrier backbones and enterprise private networks.
Advantages of Microwave:
    Cost savings—Using microwave is less expensive than using leased lines.
    Portability and reconfiguration flexibility—You can pick up a microwave transceiver and carry it to a new building. You can't do that with cables.
    Substantial bandwidth—A substantial amount of microwave bandwidth is allocated, so high-speed data, video, and multimedia can be supported.
For information about Wireless and Microwave solutions, visit :
http://karibasystems.com/index.php/solutions/wireless