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Module 10 · RF System Design

From Link Budget to Tower: Designing an RF System That Actually Closes

Link budgets, coverage prediction, frequency reuse, interference analysis, capacity planning, equipment selection, site surveys, and spectrum licensing — worked as real numbers, not just formulas.

This module starts where the studio's Link Budget and Path Loss calculators leave off: a full point-to-point link budget for an 11 GHz licensed microwave hop, worked term by term from free-space path loss through fade margin to a Vigants-Barnett annual-outage prediction, followed by the Okumura-Hata coverage model solved backward from a real EIRP figure to find a coverage-limited cell radius.

From there the module works forward into the decisions those two numbers feed: choosing a frequency-reuse cluster size and checking the resulting carrier-to-interference ratio, sizing channel capacity with Erlang B trunking theory, working backward from an EIRP target to a real antenna and power-amplifier part number, verifying Fresnel-zone and earth-bulge clearance on a physical path, and navigating FCC Part 101 coordination for licensed spectrum versus power-spectral-density limits for unlicensed 6 GHz channels.

Free related reading in this studio
→ Link Budget Calculator→ Path Loss Calculator→ Fresnel Zone Calculator→ Line of Sight vs. Fresnel Zone Clearance

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