For Australian telecommunications consultancy SAT Pty Ltd, microwave network planning means tackling complex engineering challenges across thousands of links. The company has relied on HTZ Communications for more than a decade, using it extensively for microwave link planning, propagation analysis and frequency coordination.
One significant project involved re-running frequency coordination and validating transmission paths for more than 6,000 microwave links for Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN). SAT also supports local councils, utilities and environmental projects, with applications ranging from 170 MHz point-to-point radio systems to 80 GHz microwave links.
Alongside HTZ Communications, SAT uses the RRL Plug-in for frequency assignments and ACMA licensing, bringing technical planning and regulatory requirements into its engineering workflow.
Dale Stacey of SAT Pty Ltd explains: “HTZ Communications is an integral part of our microwave planning and frequency coordination activities. Its capabilities enable us to manage complex projects efficiently and with confidence, backed by excellent, reliable support from ATDI.”
Beyond Line of Sight
SAT’s experience illustrates the scale and diversity of microwave engineering projects HTZ supports. These applications rely on a planning environment that helps engineers evaluate terrain, equipment characteristics, and atmospheric effects before deployment.
Reliable microwave planning requires more than establishing line of sight and calculating a link budget. Rain attenuation and clear-air multipath fading can affect availability, particularly as operating frequencies increase. Understanding these effects helps engineers identify vulnerabilities and assess whether a proposed link can meet its performance requirements.
Turning Climate Data into Engineering Insight
HTZ supports ITU-R P.530-19 for microwave link reliability calculations and ITU-R P.837-8 for rainfall data. Location-specific rainfall and geoclimatic inputs let engineers calculate rain attenuation and clear-air multipath fading, compare them with the available fade margin, and predict link availability and annual outage time.
Illustrative HTZ calculations show rain fade at the 0.01% level ranging from 4.4 dB at 7 GHz to 31.8 dB at 80 GHz. In the 80 GHz example, rain was the limiting factor, with a predicted annual outage of 154 minutes. These examples show why you must consider atmospheric conditions alongside terrain and equipment when assessing link reliability.
HTZ also offers options to model rain and snow using the Crane model, including parameters such as the 0°C isotherm height.
A Connected Microwave Planning Workflow
Within a single environment, engineers can analyse terrain profiles and Fresnel clearance, optimise antenna heights, calculate link budgets and availability, and evaluate adaptive modulation, XPIC, space diversity and frequency diversity.
Batch calculations across multiple bidirectional links support efficient assessment, with outputs available for reporting and further analysis.
For consultancies such as SAT, handling varied technologies, licensing requirements and large networks demands capable engineering tools and dependable technical support. Its long-standing use of HTZ Communications demonstrates the software’s practical role in delivering microwave planning and frequency coordination projects at scale.
