NLOS Infinet Version 1.0.1

R5000 series - NLOS
Software Version: MINTv1.90.5

Last updated: 4/1/2014
Whitepaper
Infinet NLOS whitepaper
Document structure
This document consists of the following chapters:
Purpose of this document - This chapter presents the information about this
documents purpose and structure
Introduction to NLOS - This chapter provides descriptions to non line of sight
scenarios and to challenges for such scenarios
Technology overview - This chapter provides descriptions to radio technology
features to improve signal reception and recognition in NLOS scenarios
Theoretical estimations - This chapter provides descriptions how to estimate
and evaluate NLOS scenarios
Infinet Unique features - This chapter provides descriptions solutions specific
to Infinet Wireless to improve data transfer with NLOS scenarios
Practical example - This chapter provides the description of one of the NLOS
installation in England
Conclusion - This chapter provides the brief summary of the NLOS scenarios
with Infinet Wireless equipment

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in this document:
MINT - mesh interconnection networking technology
FDD frequency division duplex
LoS line-of-sight
NrLoS near line of sight
NLoS non line-of-sight
OFDM orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
TDD time division duplex
BWA broadband wireless access
MIMO - Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output
MISO - Multiple-Input and Single-Output

Purpose of this document
Infinet Wireless is one of the leading manufacturers of Broadband Wireless Access
equipment mostly for carrier grade fixed installations. The majority of wireless
installations using Infinet equipment have clear visibility from one end of the link to the
other with no obstacles in the first Fresnel Zone. However, for many requirements,
especially backhauls for LTE, clear line-of-sight is not possible.

This document shows that high capacity and high availability, non line of sight wireless
links are achievable for just such an application.

The purpose of this document is to define a wireless link which is operates in line of
sight, near line of sight and non line of sight. It will explain the effects on the RF
signal caused by different obstructions and how the radios overcome these to provide a
high capacity and reliable wireless link. Moreover, the document provides configuration
tips specific for Infinet Wireless equipment that are very useful with 'near line of sight'
and 'non line of sight' installations. It also gives an example of a non line of sight link
that achieved 100Mb/s aggregate throughput.

Introduction to NLOS
A Fresnel zone is one of a theoretical infinite number of concentric ellipsoids which
define volumes in the radiation pattern of an antenna. Or simply put; the RF energy
collected at a radio receiver is the sum of the energy transmitted which had traveled
in both a straight line and an infinite number of elliptical paths from transmitter to
receiver. Energy that has traveled along odd Fresnel zones is in phase with the direct
path but energy that has traveled along an even Fresnel zone is out of phase with
the direct path. The widest radius of the n
th
Fresnel zone is dependent on the radio
frequency (or wavelength) and the path length. Radio frequency engineers are
primarily interested in the 1
st
Fresnel zone only. The radius of this can be calculated
using the following formula

LoS is a link where the 1
st
Fresnel zone is completely unobstructed.
NrLoS is a link where the 1
st
Fresnel zone is partially obstructed (<60% obstruction)
Optical LoS is when the remote antenna can be seen from the local antenna but the
1
st
Fresnel zone may be obstructed.
NLoS is a link where more than 60% of the 1
st
Fresnel zone is obstructed.
An obstruction within the 1
st
Fresnel zone of a wireless link can cause several effects
within the received radio signal not just in amplitude but also in time.
diffraction.
reflection / multipath
absorption.
The performance of NLoS link depends on the individual path (the amount and type
of obstruction) and the throughput required. In many cases, if the wireless design
and installation is performed professionally, a quality NLoS radio link will give high
bandwidth with high reliability.

Diffraction
Every radio wave changes when it encounters an obstacle. When an
electromagnetic wave reaches the edge of a sharp obstruction, diffraction occurs
the process of signal deformation and change in direction.
In reality, the energy of the wave is scattered in the plane perpendicular to the edge
of the building. The energy loss which can be considerable is proportional to
both the sharpness of the shift and the frequency of the wave. The effect on the
signal depends on the obstacle. If it is a knife edge obstruction, for example a
building which is perpendicular to the wireless link, then the signal is more likely to
experience diffraction and hence attenuation but not reflection.
Reflection
Wireless links with optical line of sight and a good RF reflector off-axis at the optimal
angle will perform reliably on the direct beam or a reflected beam. During
alignment, it is possible to see the received signals amplitude and cross polarization
isolation vary as the receiver collects RF energy from the direct path or a reflection.
If the link passes down a narrow street lined with tall buildings, the energy will
reflect off the front of the buildings even around corners, and can still be received
at the remote end reliably. If both an in-direct and direct signal are received with
similar amplitudes, the time delayed reflected signal could be received out of phase
to the direct signal. This echo could cancel out the direct signal causing errors in
the decoded signal.
Absorption
Penetration occurs when radio waves pass through an object or building that
completely or partially obstructs the line of sight. Path loss resulting from
penetration is highly dependent on frequency and the obstruction material, this
normally prevents the ability to operate NLoS links experiencing absorption at
frequencies above 5 GHz. However, some research has shown that in reality path
loss due to penetration is only slightly dependent on frequency, and that in fact it is
the type and thickness of the object itself that creates the impact on throughput.

If the link is partially obstructed by a tree, then many factors affect the link:
absorption reflection and diffraction. The key factor affecting the loss in NLOS
scenarios is diffraction losses from buildings and tree lines. The main parameter is
the ratio between obstruction depth and the Fresnel zone radius. The attenuation
as a function of clearance is indicated below:

Fresnel zones Attenuation
0.5 zone clear -2 dB
0 (touching) -6 dB
0.5 zone obstructed -10 dB
1.0 zone obstructed - 16 dB
1.5 zone obstructed -19.5 dB
3.0 zone obstructed -25.5 dB

Note that at deeply obstructed LOS, additional factors may come in, such as the
shape of the obstruction (edges of the building) or penetration through trees, in the
case of tree line.

Technology overview
OFDM
The OFDM modulation concept is to create a wideband signal consisting of a
number of independent or orthogonal subcarriers, each carrying a low bit rate data
stream. The low data rate bit stream allows for a sizeable guard band at the
beginning of each symbol, effectively isolating the symbols from each other and
neutralizing the effect of delay spread. In addition, the subchannelized operation in
conjunction with the proper error correction system proves to be very tolerant of
narrowband multipath fades. In most cases, only a limited number of subcarriers
may be affected by a fade, causing the loss of symbols. With the remainder of the
wideband signal unaffected, the error correction system takes over and is able to
reconstruct the small percentage of missing data bytes.
OFDM and NLOS
OFDM is a key element in the NLoS solution. The significant amplitude of the signal
loss between a transmitter and NLoS receiver, due to obstructions and multipath
fading, mandate additional measures be taken to increase system gain.
The most obvious way to increase the system gain is by increasing the transmitters
RF output power or the receivers sensitivity. Due to strict linearity requirements for
an OFDM system, a high power OFDM transmitter is difficult to achieve. Improving
the receivers sensitivity is also difficult to achieve without sacrificing data
throughput.

MIMO
There have been recent successes to combat link attenuation involving
sophisticated methods of spatial and time diversity.
Space-time coding and multi-input / multi-output (MIMO) radio systems are able to
access the real time channel conditions to adjust how the data is sent to multiple
transmit antennas and how best to extract symbols from multiple receive antennas.
MIMO (Multiple Input and Multiple Output)
Use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver side to improve
communication performance. Data is sent on both the horizontal and vertical
polarizations. Data is space-time coded (spatial multiplexing) to improve the
reliability of data transmission. Infinet MIMO 2x2 technology effectively doubles
spectrum efficiency and allows to achieve real throughput up to 280 Mbps in 40
MHz band (please see picture below).
Data transmission path in Infinet Wireless MIMO products

MULTIPATH PROPAGATION
Multiple reflections results in signal multipath propagation. Multipath appears
when obstacles exist between the units locations. In such conditions the
transmitted signal experiences reflection, diffraction and scattering, which causes
multiple echoes of the same signal to arrive at the receiver at different times.
ISI
The effect of multipath phenomenon on wireless communication is ISI - InterSymbol
Interference. The echoes of a certain symbol (namely symbol n), resulting from the
multi path nature of an NLOS link, are seen as interference to the subsequent
symbol (namely symbol N+1). OFDM technology overcomes the ISI problem by using
a Guard Interval (GI) period at the beginning of symbol. The Guard Interval period is
actually the part of the symbol that is corrupted by the ISI. The data period that
follows the Guard Interval carries the data payload.
The use of OFDM accounts for high data rates and high spectral efficiency. This is
achieved by parallel transmission of multiple sub-carriers over-the-air, each capable
of carrying modulated data (up to QAM 64 5/6 with Infinet Wireless units). The sub-
carriers are placed on orthogonal frequencies. Orthogonality means that the central
frequency of a certain sub carrier coincides with the nulls of the other sub carriers.
The use of orthogonal frequencies avoids interference between the different sub
carriers, therefore enabling usage of QAM modulation on each carrier, thus
achieving very high spectral efficiency.

Theoretical estimations
System properties
A simplified NLoS link budget can be obtained by adding the additional NLoS path
attenuation (Lnlos) to the traditional LoS link budget, as shown below:

P
rx
=P
tx
+G
tx
+G
rx
20log( d) 20log( f ) L
f
L
nlos

Here,
Prx + Ptx are the received and transmitted power (dBm ratio of power in decibels
referenced to 1 milliwatt)
Gtx and Grx are antenna gain (in decibels referenced to an isotropic radiator dBi) for
the transmitter and receiver respectively
d is the link distance (in kilometers)
f is the frequency (in GHz)
Lf is atmospheric loss (in dB)
Lnlos is the additional loss (in dB) resulting from the deployment of a NrLoS or NLoS
link

For example: Infinet Wireless units for 3.5 GHz frequencies could use up to 64QAM
modulation in a 40MHzwide TDD channel with a 2x2 MIMO (dual-polarized)
configuration providing full duplex peak throughput of 150Mbps (300Mbps
aggregate).

Diffraction
It is commonly believed that the diffraction losses occurring at frequencies around
3 GHz are prohibitively high, and consequently, deploying a system using this effect
for NLoS propagation at such frequencies is not feasible. However, even if the
absolute loss can be relatively high, 34dB for (with a diffraction angle of 30 degrees),
in comparison the relative difference will be only 6dB much less than the
difference in gain for comparable antenna sizes.
Reflection
Reflection loss is strongly dependent on the material of the reflecting object. It is
possible to cover areas that are difficult to reach using multiple reflections in
principle. However, taking advantage of more than two reflections is in practice
problematic due to limited link budget and the difficulty of finding suitably aligned
reflective surfaces. Lnlos predictions for a single reflection can be expected to vary
between 5dB and 20dB.
Penetration
As with the case for NLoS reflection, the path loss resulting from penetration is
highly dependent on the material of the object blocking the line of sight.
Consequently, the excess path loss for the single-tree scenario varied between 0
and 6dB. In the double-tree case excess path loss varied from 8dB to 20dB. It must
be noted that trees obstructing the path cause an additional problems primarily
that the channel behavior can vary rapidly over time, thus preventing the radio from
compensating.

Infinet Unique Features
Adaptive Polling (Dynamic TDD)
To prevent over-the-air collisions Infinet Wireless uses polling (marker access),
where one of the devices plays the role of the communications master. This master
device consequentially gives the right for transmission and reception to every slave
device in the wireless network. Using polling effectively lowers delay and jitter and
allows the use of wireless networks for real-time traffic delivery.
Infinet Wireless devices use a single frequency for transmitting and receiving data
over the wireless links. In this case Dynamic Time Division Duplex (Dynamic TDD)
multiplexing technology is used to enable full duplex data transmission. Dynamic
time slots are allocated for data going in both directions, allowing any ratio for
upstream/downstream data flow, depending on the demand in free bandwidth. The
size of the allocated time slots depends on the amount of traffic, priority, number
of retries and errors on the link, thus allowing Infinet Wireless effectively serve any
kind of data streams Internet, VoIP, CCTV, etc., as the timeslot structure adapts to
the data flow, resulting in the most effective data transmission with the lowest
latency and packet loss rate.

Classical TDD systems (Exalt, Orthogon) allow only fixed ratio for incoming/outgoing
data flow (50:50, 30:60, etc.). Some systems (e.g. Winlink and most microwaves)
allow fixed 50:50 ratio only without the capability to alter ratios. Other TDD systems
can be statistically adjusted from the base ratios.

MISO
Reflections could cause vertical polarization outputted from one unit could be
received by horizontal transceiver of other unit. Also, such polarization swap could
happen constantly all the time. However, this effect could be easily solved by
switching Infinet units to special 'multiple-input-single-output ' (MISO) mode. MISO
mode with Infinet Wireless results in simultaneous transmission of the same data
signal using both (vertical and horizontal) polarizations, hence on the reception side
the unit receives the same data to both (vertical and horizontal) transceivers. The
effect is immediately twice less data, however such mode significantly improves
signal reception quality and doesn't care about polarization swap effect. MISO mode
is extremely helpful to 'stabilize' the link especially when the units works with
reflected signals.
MISO (Multiple Input Single output)
Special mode of operation of MIMO devices. It is used in nLOS conditions or in a
noisy RF environment. In MISO mode the same data is transmitted over both
polarizations, lowering the performance of the link, but enhancing the ability to
transmit data in case of interference or obstacles in transmission path (please see
picture below)
Data transmission path in Infinet Wireless MIMO products in MISO mode

MINT
MINT stands for Mesh Interconnection Network Technology which points to the
technology for networks based on arbitrary connections. Therefore MINT allows to
create networks combines from any inner topology (mesh, ring, star, ptp, etc.).
Meanwhile it is guaranteed the customer traffic delivery would be done using the
fastest route available between any MINT supported nodes at every single time
period.
The route will be selected with account to:
Current links load between MINT supported nodes
Throughput available
Wireless link quality
Error rate
Optimal route consistency is being checked in real-time. The most important criteria
for route selection are:
Minimal RTT
Maximum throughput
Route switch will be performed seamlessly and immediately due to link quality
change. There will be no packet or sessions lost during route switch process.
Route switch to backup route will take fraction of second in case of instant main
route failure. Redundant connection increase network reliability, also MINT
protocol is loop free protocol. MINT algorithms exclude loop creation and are
suitable for transmission of multicast traffic, video surveillance.
MINT has one important principle at its basis:
No matter the complexity of inner network structure, MINT would provide the best
quality data transfer service.

MINT features
Architecture - Virtual Ethernet
All units are treated as independent peers. It is possible to assign different
peer roles using configuration settings.
Any topology connection possible: PtP, PtMP, Mesh, Tree, Ring, Full Mesh
Independence from IP level (Layer 3) protocols
Unified MINT network via interconnection between different MINT
domains, between different PtMP (with different frequencies), etc.
Interconnection tools - using JOIN, PRF, MINT-over-IP, MINT-over-Ethernet
Multiple connections to unlimited number of MINT nodes with optimal
transport path selection
Frequency roaming support
Mobile CPE connection support
Built-in QoS policies, Automatic QoS
MINT resides between Data Link Layer and Network Layer in accordance with OSI
network model
Another approach to solve the NLOS issue is to adopt to ever-changing radio
communication medium (air) by using at least 2 radio units at one installation point
with possibility to utilize better Signal-to-Noise signal levels of one or other unit for
every data transmission. The idea is to configure each unit to different central
frequency hence to different Base Station or any other neighboring unit. Next, we
interconnect both units to each other by MINT protocol through wired switch using
special Pseudo Radio Interface (Logical interface). After it we interconnect both
wireless MINT domains through wired MINT domain using JOIN command. The
diagram below illustrates such scenario.

Practical results
One early NLoS scenario occurred during installation of a wireless video surveillance
system in Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire, England. Additional relay installations
were restricted. The results were obtained using Infinet Wireless link test
procedure.
Example output of the Infinet Wireless link test:

Achieved link test results are shown below:
Required RF bitrate
ltest rf5.0 000e8e19ce50 -tb 15
Bidirectional throughput test to 000E8E19CE50 via rf5.0 with no priority
packet size 1536, bitrate 52000, reply bitrate 52000
Please wait...............
=============================================================================
Direction | Kbit/s | Pkt/s | Retries | Errors | min/avg/max/stddev (usec)
=============================================================================
Transmit | 26221 | 2185 | 2.93% | 0.00% | 35/457/49250/1638
Receive | 13599 | 1133 | 1.99% | 0.00% | 19/882/59101/3012
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total | 39820 | 3318 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maximum RF bitrate
ltest rf5.0 000e8e19ce50 -r 130 -tb 15
Bidirectional throughput test to 000E8E19CE50 via rf5.0 with no priority
packet size 1536, bitrate 130000, reply bitrate 130000
Please wait...............
=============================================================================
Direction | Kbit/s | Pkt/s | Retries | Errors | min/avg/max/stddev (usec)
=============================================================================
Transmit | 47593 | 3966 | 3.08% | 0.00% | 30/252/29485/1491
Receive | 47469 | 3955 | 2.58% | 0.00% | 15/252/53173/1189
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total | 95062 | 7921 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Both NLoS links can be seen in this map:

BW Camera to BW Relay at only 129m, then onto BW Police Station at 332m. Both
points are located very non line of sight.

Camera to relay obstructions

Relay to Police Station obstructions

BW Camera location

BW Relay location

View from BW Relay to BW Camera

View from BW Relay to BW Police Station

Conclusion
The short link length helped boost system gain and enabled reliable NLoS link
performance even at high data throughput.
In both of these links, the obstructions were quite stable and will have primarily
caused diffraction and absorption.
The ability to operate in near line of sight and non line of sight conditions is crucial
to the future use of Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) as an access technology.
Understandably, operators need to know that BWA can be deployed anywhere, and
can overcome obstacles such as mountains and trees in rural areas, and buildings in
suburban and dense urban areas. Such capabilities allow for various deployment
scenarios from private residential homes in suburban areas to offices and
businesses in central urban areas, thus giving operators the advantage of catering
for the whole broadband access market with a single BWA system. The benefits of
having BWA systems with NLOS capabilities are:
Better coverage and penetration, which enables the provision of BWA services
to previously unserved customers, thus increasing the revenue potential for
the Operator/Service Provider.
Reduced operation and installation costs, resulting from faster and simpler
installation procedures that do not dictate mandatory LOS conditions and may
save the need to install additional accessory equipment such as high masts,
etc.

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R5000 series - NLOS

Software Version: MINTv1.90.5

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