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About Me

MTIN is a full service consulting firm with over 15 years of experience. We specialize in ISP networks.  Other clients include enterprise, education, government, and SOHO.  We have Mikrotik, Cisco, and other certified engineers on staff.

Starting A Wisp - Antenna Polarization

WISPs have two major antenna polarizations to deal with. You have Horizontal & Vertical.  As with anything you have bonuses and drawback of each.  Some WISPs use Circular polarization but I would recommend against it.  Your choices on circular polarization are much more limited.

Vertical Polarization (V-POL) is the most common out there.  Home routers and other consumer hardware are almost always v-pol.  V-Pol is cheaper to manufacturer when it comes to omni-directional antennas especially.

Horizontal Polarization (H-POL) is used for situations where there is quite a bit of noise.  By switching from V-pol to H-pol in a high noise area you might gain 20+db of separation from noise.  This only works if there is not much horizontally polarized antennas out there.  H-pol is good for links over water due to the fact it spreads out left to right as opposed to up and down.  This way you do not get refraction and other such weirdness from the signal bouncing off the water.  H-pol antennas are typically more expensive to buy.

Panel and directional antennas are very easy to change polarization.  You simply rotate the antenna 90 degrees.  Most modern enclosure designs allow you to either re-locate the connectors for ethernet or to rotate the entire panel.

Some manufactures give you the ability to software select what type of polarization you want. Ubiquity is one such manufacturer. Within their software you can select your antenna polarization. This is extremely handy should you have both sets of antennas on a tower.

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