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Module 5 · Transmission Lines & RF Hardware

Transmission Lines & RF Hardware

Coax, waveguide, microstrip, connectors, filters, duplexers, combiners, splitters, attenuators, amplifiers, and LNAs — every stage between the antenna and the radio, and how each one gets sized.

An antenna is only as good as everything between it and the radio. This module works through the passive and active hardware that makes up that path — why coax settled on 50Ω, when waveguide replaces it, how RF connectors and PIM performance become a real reliability concern at high-power sites, how filters, duplexers, and combiners let one antenna or one site serve multiple radios without them interfering with each other, and how splitters, attenuators, amplifiers, and LNAs are sized against a real link and noise budget rather than picked off a shelf.

By the end of this module you should be able to explain why an LNA's placement in a receive chain matters more than almost any other component choice, and why a DAS design that ignores cumulative splitter loss will under-deliver signal at its farthest antennas even though every individual component looks fine on its own datasheet — the exact budget Module 9 (Microwave & Satellite) and Module 10 (RF System Design) build full link-budget calculations around.

Free related reading in this studio
→ Standing Waves & VSWR Explained→ Passive vs. Active DAS: How Each One Distributes Signal→ Cable Loss Calculator→ DAS Chain Simulator

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