🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:17:08 +0000, Larry <noone@home.com> wrote:

>sfdavidkaye2@yahoo.com (David Kaye) wrote in news:i2sni8$rt1$1
>@news.eternal-september.org:
>
>> I'm not 
>> asking companies to limit their antennas, just make them pleasing or 
>> invisible.

>But, just like invisible sellphone antennas on smartphones, invisible 
>antennas that look like trees and birdhouses SUCK AS ANTENNAS and cannot 
>provide us the level of service of a proper panel antenna on the side of a 
>proper tower.

Baloney.  Disguise antenna are roughly the same panel antennas that
you'll find on a conventional tripod, lattice, or monopole tower.  The
radome material is usually fiberglass, which is RF transparent.  What
does suck with disguise structures is that there's not enough room on
the tree for enough panels to allow more than one provider per site.
The number of antennas per structure just doesn't come close to that
of a proper monopole with outriggers.  Building mounts are worse in
that only some sides of the rooftop box, or whatever, can be used.
Disguise towers also tend to be lower than proper towers.  

As far as aesthetics goes, things have gotten much better in the last
few years.  Trees, that actually look like trees, are appearing:
<http://www.rftransparent.com/photogallery/heightsystems1.html>
No more of this nonsense:
<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/crud/AmestiAT&T.jpg>

There's also technical progress in the area of DAS (distributed
antenna systems).  The central cell site is on the ground, usually
inside an office building.  There is no tower, monopole, or disguise
antenna.  Instead, the RF is downconverted to some lower RF frequency,
and send down a fiber optic cable to the top of a utility pole. There,
the RF is upconverted back to the original frequency, and radiated by
a simple omni antenna.  Same with receive RF going back to the cell
site.  What's nice about this system is that it's modulation
insensitive (it's analog) which allows a mixed mess of frequencies and
modulation methods to coexist on the same fiber, amps, and antenna.
Many carriers and services can share the same system.  Of course, each
cell site feeds a wide area of utility pole antennas.

Las Vegas City Center has such a system with about 70 poles.  
<http://www.innerwireless.com/documents/Largest-DAS-install-Vegas.pdf>
Mt Vernon and Yonkers in New Yuck are installing 300 such nodes.  The
local university, UCSC, has such a similar microcellular system shared
by all the cellular companies.
<http://currents.ucsc.edu/04-05/07-12/antennas.html>
<http://www.nextgnetworks.net/site/universities/ucsantacruz.html>



-- 
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558