Installation & User’s Manual Trailblazer Digital Radio 2011 TB 5.9 Part Number 490-2000 Rev 1.
Trademark Information Trailblazer, the Trailblazer logo, RuralConnect, and the RuralConnect logo are registered trademarks of Carlson Wireless Technologies Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Copyright Copyright © 2002-2011 Carlson Wireless, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No part of this manual may be reproduced without permission from Carlson Wireless Technologies.
SAFETY WARNING Potentially hazardous voltages exist on TELCO lines and associated equipment. Always observe standard safety precautions during installation, operation, and maintenance of these products. To avoid the possibility of electric shock, be sure to disconnect the power from the remote power source before you perform any line connections or repairs. Always disconnect all the cables connected to the system before disconnecting the grounding connection.
Incidence of Harm If your telephone equipment causes harm to the telephone network, the telephone company may disconnect your service temporarily. When possible, the telephone company will notify you in advance. If advanced notice is not practical, you will be notified as soon as possible. You will also be informed of your right to file a compliant with the FCC.
Declaration of Conformity Manufacturer’s Name: Manufacturer’s Address: Declares that the product: Product Name: Carlson Wireless Technologies Inc. 1385 8th Street Arcata, CA 95521 USA Trailblazer TB59 Conforms to the following standard(s) or other normative document(s): EMC: FCC Part 90 Supplementary Information: Published Specifications Chris Spoerle Director of Quality Management 1385 8th Street Arcata, CA Jan 2011 Trailblazer Installation and User Manual version 1.
Table of Contents _____________________________________________________________________________ 1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Scope of Manual ..................................................................................... 1 1.2 Functional Overview and Applications .................................................... 1 1.2.1 Main Features and Advantages .......................................................
4.3.3 Mounting........................................................................................ 27 4.4 Weatherproofing RF Connections ........................................................ 30 4.5 Antenna Alignment ............................................................................... 30 4.6 Interference Solutions ........................................................................... 30 4.7 Lightning Protection ...........................................................................
List of Figures _____________________________________________________________________________ Figure 1: Line of Sight is clear, the first Fresnel Zone is NOT clear. ..................... 5 Figure 2: Base Unit Power Connections ............................................................. 10 Figure 3: Connecting the Serial Cable ................................................................ 15 Figure 4: Rotary Switch and Reset Button ..........................................................
1 Introduction 1.1 Scope of Manual The purpose of this manual is to provide planning and installation personnel with the appropriate procedures to plan and install the 2011 Trailblazer Digital Microwave Radio and accessory equipments. In order to avoid harm to persons or damage to the product, please ensure that you have read and understand the safety, unpacking, and installation sections before proceeding. 1.
bandwidth PCM POTS or Leased Line cards for high quality, uncompressed audio with an excellent signal-to-noise ratio. Easy Installation The units mount on a 1.5"- 3" pipe or pole or to any vertical surface, use an external antenna, and have their own power supply (optional) or operate on 12-24 VDC, easily powered by solar. Low Power Draw: Ideal for Solar Applications The low power consumption of 2 Watts makes the units very energy efficient.
On-board Ethernet satisfies simultaneous LAN / IP data and PCM voice needs with an Industry Standard RJ45 10BaseT connection. Some of its advanced features include 802.3 Ethernet supported by Transparent LAN bridging and Automatic LAN MAC address filtering at the MAC level, making it transparent to higher level protocols such as TCP/IP, DECnet, NETBIOS, and IPX network protocols. Broadcast, multicast, or frames set up for peered LAN are forwarded while reserving maximum RF bandwidth. 1.2.
2.1 Site Requirements and System Planning 2.1.1 Grounding A ground is a low impedance electrical connection to earth that is used to dissipate energy. Grounding your Trailblazer is very important for safety reasons as well as to protect your system from damage due to lightning and static charge build up. Since lightning strikes and surges follow the path of least resistance, all ground wires must be as short and straight as possible and not be coiled or looped.
a reasonable signal at the receiving antenna. This three dimensional space is called the RF LOS or Fresnel zone for the French physicist who first discovered its importance. 2.1.4 Fresnel Zone: What it is in plain English! The Fresnel zone is the tree dimensional cone around the line-of-sight that radio waves spread out into after they leave the antenna. The cross section of the first Fresnel zone is circular; subsequent zones’ cross sections are annular.
Some examples are given in the table above. On the software CD that comes with each system there is a folder called “Calculators”. In that folder you will find an excel spreadsheet called fresnel zone calculator.xls you can use to calculate your own path. Set the Fresnel zone to even numbered values when plotting a profile to see potential areas of phase canceling present in the path. You can improve your path by optimizing the height of antennas so that the first Fresnel zone is clear. 2.1.
is recommended for any cable runs over 100 feet. The chart below provides the loss factor for several popular cable sizes. Coax Cable Attenuation (dB per 100 feet) Cable Type at 2.5 GHz at 5.8 GHz LMR 400 6.8 dB 10.8 dB LMR 500 5.5 dB 8.9 dB LMR 600 4.4 dB 7.3 dB 1/2 inch LDF Heliax™ 3.9 dB 7.0 dB LMR 900 3.0 dB 4.9 dB 7/8 inch LDF Heliax™ 2.3 dB 3.7 dB Table 3: Coax Cable Loss Table 2.1.
2.2 Unpacking NOTE: Always observe ESD precautions when handling circuit boards! Before opening inspect the shipping box(es) and report any damage to the shipping carrier. Unpack and compare the contents against the packing slip and inspect for damage. Report any damage to the units or missing components to your CWT sales representative.
2.3 Bench Testing Instructions Before going into the field set up the units on your bench to become familiar with their set up, operation, configuration, and verify their functionality. Each system is shipped with a handy, full-color “Quick Start Guide” for simplified step-by-step instructions for bench testing. The following section will provide you with the same information in greater detail. 2.3.
Terminal Block Negative (Normally earth ground) Positive 12 to 24 VDC Figure 2: Base Unit Power Connections If you are not using the CWT power supply, size your power supply adequately using Ohm’s law. For example, if you provide 12VDC you consume 2/12 A or about 167mA. If you provide 24VDC you use about half of that or 85mA. CWT recommends providing at least 4 times the power consumption. The Trailblazer consumes 2 Watts. CWT’s power supply with battery backup supplies 13.8VDC @ 1 A or 14 Watts.
Cable Size (A.W.G.) (mm) Ohms/100ft (both legs ) feet per Ohm (both legs) if feeding 13.8, distance with 5% (voltage loss 2pr.) if feeding 24, distance with 5% (voltage loss 2pr.) 14 1.63 0.516 194 1783 6202 16 1.29 0.818 122 1125 3912 18 1.09 1.302 77 707 2458 19 0.91 1.642 61 560 1949 22 0.64 3.3 30 279 970 24 0.51 5.24 19 176 611 26 0.41 8.32 12 111 385 Table 4: Feed Cable Sizing and Distance for the Traiblazer 2.3.
For durability as well as ease of installation and acquisition, repeater and synchronization cables require standard RJ45 connectors and CAT5 cable using standard Ethernet cable wiring. Remember to feed the CAT5 cable through the weatherproof cord grips before terminating the ends. In addition to the RJ45 connector, there are (4) screw terminals for synchronization. Wire SYNC OUT to SYNC IN and vice versa. 2.3.
13 38 14 39 15 40 16 41 17 42 E1 M1 E2 M2 E3 M3 E4 M4 Ground Ground 13 38 14 39 15 40 16 41 17 42 E5 M5 E6 M6 E7 M7 E8 M8 Ground Ground If a standard telephone cable is used, the connections may be brought to pre-wired punch blocks using two 25 pair telephone cables. The location of the signals is shown in the following table as they appear on a standard punch block. The punch block terminals are numbered from top to bottom.
16 42 17 14 32 33 34 E4 Ground Ground 16 42 17 32 33 34 Trailblazer Installation and User Manual version 1.
3 Operation 3.1 Configuring and Accessing the Trailblazer Unit 3.1.1 Connecting the Serial Cable You can access your Trailblazer with the GUI program, included on the CWT product CD, and the included serial cable. Simply plug the DB 9 connector of the serial cable into the serial port on your computer and the three pin connector to the three pin connector (COM1) on the radio board (bottom board) as shown. DO NOT USE COM2! It is currently reserved for future applications.
After you have selected the correct COM port, the software will display the connected unit’s current configuration data. The screen will look slightly different depending on whether you are connected to the CPE or Base unit. The box highlighted in green will display the type of unit that is currently communicating with the software. All systems are shipped pre-configured. Do not change any parameters unless advised to do so by a CWT technician. The integrated V.
The new CPE and Base unit software will take about a minute to download. The firmware takes about 3 or 4 minutes to download. To the right you will see a sample view of what you should see during the download. Do not interrupt the download! When the download is complete, the unit will automatically reboot and update the version numbers. Once the “Program Download” button reappears, you can select another file to download.
Click on the Terminal tab to monitor status, view and log real-time link quality reports and manually interface with the Trailblazer radio cards via the Terminal screen. In the middle of the terminal screen you will notice a command line box. One command at a time may be entered and sent to the radio card via this terminal interface or by using terminal software. GUI showing status of a CPE terminal 3.2 Accessing the Trailblazer using HyperTerminal™ 3.2.
The radio frequency and scrambling code of the Carlson Wireless radios operate on numerous band selections based on purchased configuration. Within the selected operational band, multiple frequencies are provided in combination with code variations. Selections within the offered band are provided using the 16 position rotary switch located between the 10BaseT port and the white three pin connectors.
Preceding future integration of these functions into GUI software, some system configurations must performed on a manual text entry level. To do this, can interface with the Trailblazer radio card using either the GUI software on the Terminal screen (See Section 3.1.3) or by using the HyperTerminal™ software. You will also need to a 50ms delay to the linefeed in your terminal ASCII settings in order to send text commands to Trailblazer radio through terminal software. See screenshot (right) for an example.
To set for Star topology or Point-to-Point and Bandwidth of the Base unit: This is set using the EEprom register “E”. If the first digit of the switch setting or “most significant digit” is an “8” then it is planned to be in point-to-point mode. If the first is “0” or none then it will be in Star mode. The second digit or “least significant digit” is for the bandwidth (as transmitted from the base unit) with the number corresponding to how many 64 kb channels are made available.
Table 6: Example configuration scripts Additional Configuration Notes: Total transmit channel count may only be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 Total CPE channels may not exceed 8 The sum of CPE voice and data channels may not exceed 8 either individually or collectively Currently, all timeslots must be the same return bandwidth There are distance issues regarding use timeslot zero (TS0) 22 Trailblazer Installation and User Manual version 1.
4 Field Installation Options 4.1 Mounting the Enclosure The versatile mounting bracket assembly (PN: 900-7200) allows the Trailblazer enclosure to be properly mounted on a pole up to 2.25” in diameter. The mounting bracket assembly also converts to a wall mount for mounting the Trailblazer enclosure on a flat surface. See below for details for the two different mounting applications.
Figure 7: Pole mounting the Trailblazer enclosure Pole Mounting Instructions: Attach the mounting flanges to the enclosure using the ¼ -20 x 1” bolts, ¼” flat washers, ¼” lock washers, and ¼” hex nuts. Tighten the ¼” nuts to maximum of 25 in-lbs (2.1 ft-lbs). Do not over tighten! Position the enclosure on the pole. Place the U-bolts around the pole, and slide the pipe flanges over them with the serrated sides facing the pole. See figure 1.
This device has been designed to operate with the antenna listed below, and having a maximum gain of 16 dB. Antennas not included in this list or having a gain greater than 16 dB are strictly prohibited for use with this device. The required antenna impedance is 50 ohms.
Using this example one can calculate the following: Note that the radio is calibrated for a maximum output power of +7dBm. Subtract the interconnecting cable and lightning protection losses of 2dB = total power arriving to antenna of 15dBm. . For 5.8 – 5.9GHz, the FCC allows a maximum EIRP of 23dBm. This would mean that an antenna with a gain of 16dBi would be acceptable with no cable losses.
4.3 16dBi 5.8 - 5.9 GHz Sector Base-Station Antenna This section is designed to support the installation, operation and maintenance of the 16dBi directional sector antenna. Due to it’s small size, ease of mounting and low maintenance it is most commonly used in conjunction with the Trailblazer system. To avoid harm to persons or damage to the product please ensure that you have read through the safety, unpacking and installation sections before proceeding. 4.3.
Antenna Airmax Sector 5G-120-16 Trailblazer Installation and User Manual version 1.
This is a properly mounted sector antenna. Note the ability of the mount the aim the antenna uptilt, downtilt and to either side. Trailblazer Installation and User Manual version 1.
4.4 Weatherproofing RF Connections Once you have the antenna mounted and secured. Complete the installation by properly attaching the weatherproof cables. 4.5 Antenna Alignment Rough alignment: This is fairly straight forward. Since it is a prerequisite that you have line of sight between the two points, here are several ideas that have worked for installers: If you can see the other unit, simply aim the units towards each other.
Common Interferers are: microwave, wireless household controls, emergency radio equipment, cordless telephones, wireless video products, etc. (refer to Interference Section Error! Reference source not found.
10 shocks 1 shock 20 kA Return Loss and Attenuation @ 0.5 GHz @ 1 GHz @ 4 GHz < -25 dB < - 25 dB < -20 dB Insertion Loss @ 0.5 GHz @ 1 GHz @ 2.5 GHz @ 4 GHz < 0.05 dB < 0.03 dB < 0.067 dB < 0.29 dB Connector Type “N” Housing Material Copper alloy with CuZnSn finish Contact Sockets Material Gold Plated Copper alloy Insulation Material Teflon per ASTM-D-170 Table 7: RF Lightning Protection Figure 8: Surge Protection, RF Trailblazer Installation and User Manual version 1.
Figure 9: Antenna Port Lightning Protector, VSWR and Insertion Loss Trailblazer Installation and User Manual version 1.
4.7.2 Telephone Line Port/ Subscriber Premises Protection Line 1 Tip Line 1 Ring Earth Ground Line 2 Tip Line 2 Ring Figure 10: Primary Telephone Line Transient Protection The telephone line surge protector is designed to be used as a primary station protector at the subscriber end of the loop. It provides protection against lightning surges, power cross conditions, and ground potential rises.
Telephone Line Gas Discharge Lightning Surge Protector Specifications CWT Part number 640-6500 Description Sealed gas tube station protector DC Breakdown@100V/s 300-500V Impulse Breakdown 100V/µs 10kV/µs 100V/µs, vented 600V 850V 1200V Insulation Resistance@100V/leakage current 10e10 Ω Capacitance@1kHz <15pF DC Extinguishing (Network applied) @52V, 135V, 150V <150ms Impulse Life Characteristics >400x500A 10/1000µs 10kA 8/20µs AC Life characteristics >65A, 11 cycles Enclosure Material Weat
5 Test & Maintenance 5.1 Diagnostics 5.1.1 LED Function The Trailblazer units’ are equipped with multifunction status indication LEDs on the top and radio card. There are no LEDs on the interface card. You can read the link and alignment status as well as packet loss information quickly, without using a PC. Use the table below for translating the LED patterns.
Setting your units next to each other on your bench with the test antennas attached to the N female connectors on the enclosureThe LED will indicate from top to bottom in the preceding table, from the No Power to the Final Alignment and Errors state. The Trailblazer system should reach the CPU Operational state within 20 seconds after power is applied. The Acquired state completes when the CPE terminal has detected and locked to the radio signal from the base unit.
6 Appendix 6.1 About Carlson Wireless 6.1.1 Mission Carlson Wireless Technologies Inc. (CWT) is dedicated to designing, manufacturing and marketing innovative, low power digital WLL (wireless local loop) telephone systems that provide high-quality voice and data links for rural and remote telephone users worldwide. 6.1.2 History CWT (Carlson Wireless Technologies) Inc. was founded in 1999 by James Carlson and is a privately held California “C” corporation headquartered in Arcata, California.
6.2 System Specifications Air Interface Data Throughput Rate End-to-End System Latency Fax Compatibility Modem Performance *Proprietary DSSS CDMA using a negotiated QOS with Time Division Duplexing 512, 256, 128, 64 kbps, Configurable with GUI Less than 4.4 ms Depending on Speed Selected G3 (9.6kbps) and G4 (14.4kbps) V.34 (33kbps) via POTS, up to V.90 (56kbps) via RuralConnect™ RF Performance 5.9GHz Options Available 8 sub channels in 5.9 GHz 23dBm in 5.
6.2.1 Block Diagram Figure 12: Block Diagram of Radio Card Trailblazer Installation and User Manual version 1.
6.3 Cable Pin outs Should you misplace or lose your serial programming cable, you can call your CWT sales rep. and order a replacement or construct a new cable from a few simple parts using the diagram below. 6.3.1 Configuration Port Pinout Configuration Port Cable Construction Table A DB9 pin Female to be fit in the PC is wired with: DCD on pin 1, A 3 pin, .
Standard “AT” Pinout for a DB9 Connector Figure 14: Serial Data Cable Schematic Serial Data Cable Pinout Pin Signal Description Direction Data Carrier Detect To PC 1 DCD 2 RD Receive Data To PC 3 TD Transmit Data From PC 4 DTR Data Terminal Ready From PC 5 GND Signal Ground Common 6 DSR Data Set Ready To PC 7 RTS Request to Send From PC 8 CTS Clear to Send To PC 9 RI Ring Indicator To PC Table 11: Serial Data Cable Pinout Trailblazer Installation and User Manual ver
6.4 Advanced Programming and Diagnostics 6.4.1 Configuring the Serial Port Parameters In order to communicate with the Trailblazer units using the Command Line Interface, the serial port parameters need to be configured. The serial port parameters are illustrated in the following figure. These settings were configured within the program by Hilgraeve (see left and below).
6.4.2 Setting the V35 enable and port location To enable the V35 data port, open up the Hyperterminal™ interface and if you are communicating with a CPE unit after booting type: [stop]. If you connected to a base unit it will stop on it’s own after a minute. are Then type in: [wee 5 1] or [wee 5 2] depending on which line no you wish to be used as a data path the Ethernet connection. The system should respond back with: 0005: 02 as shown above.
character (A, B, C, D, E or F), the value is greater than 9. In the above example the RSSI value is sufficient. 6.4.4 Air Link Quality The quality of the Air Link can be interrogated through the Command Line Interface using following command: debug 1 . This command causes Air Link statistics to be printed every 4 seconds. The statistics be stopped by typing, debug 0 . The processing of the debug command is illustrated in following figure.
3. Download the new software/firmware program. The following two figures illustrate this step. The menu option “Send Text File …” is selected. Next, the dialog box will appear which allows the selection of the file to download to the Trailblazer unit. After the file is selected, click the “Open” button. The download will proceed automatically from this point. 4. Download has completed. The end of the download is illustrated below.
6.5 Antenna Patterns and Specifications 6.5.1 16dBi Directional Panel Plots and Specs 16dBi Directional Panel Specifications Pole Size 1.5” (38) Weight 2.4 (1.1) Dimension (W x L) 14.45 x 2.5 x 16 (367x63x41) Wind Load 120 MPH Frequency Range 5100-5900 MHz Hpol Beamwidth (6dB) 137 deg. deg Vpol Beamwidth (6dB) 119 deg deg VSWR 1.5:1 Elevation Beamwidth 8 deg. deg Electrical Downtilt 4 deg deg Polarization Dual Linear Cross – Pol Isolation 22. dB min Gain 15.0 – 16.
6.6 Warranty Limited Warranty, USA Carlson Wireless Technologies Inc. (CWT) or Carlson Wireless USA, collectively referred to as "Carlson“), will repair this product with new or rebuilt parts, free of charge, in the USA or Puerto Rico for one (1) year from the date of original purchase in the event of a defect in material or workmanship. Mail-in service in the USA can be obtained during the warranty period from a Carlson Factory Service center by calling +1.707.822.
6.7 Acronyms/Abbreviations ANSI ................. American National Standards Institute async ............... asynchronous CCITT................ Comité Consultatif International Téléphonique et Télégraphique CD ..................... carrier detect CPE.................... customer premise equipment CS ...................... clear to send CSU ................... channel service unit CTS ................... clear to send CO ……………... central office dB....................... decibel DCE ...................
6.8 Glossary ANSI Acronym for American National Standards Institute. Devises and proposes recommendations for international communications standards. asynchronous A method of data transmission which allows characters, that are preceded by a start bit and are followed by a stop bit, to be sent at irregular intervals. bandwidth A range within a band of frequencies or an amount of data that can be transmitted in a preset amount of time. The bandwidth determines the rate at which information can be sent.
HDLC Acronym for High Level Data Link Control. It is a generic link-level communications protocol developed by ISO, that manages synchronous code-transparent serial information transfer over a link connection. See also SDLC. host computer The primary or controlling computer in a multiple computer operation. in-band signaling is signaling over the same channel used for data. IP Acronym for Internet Protocol. It provides for transmitting blocks of data between hosts identified by fixed-length addresses.
SDLC Acronym for synchronous data link control. A link-level communications protocol that manages synchronous, code-transparent, serial information transfer over a link connection. TELNET The standard TCP/IP remote login protocol VT-100 A non-intelligent terminal or terminal emulation mode used for asynchronous communications. Trailblazer Installation and User Manual version 1.
