2/28/23, 11:03 AM PMP 450: Run a tower scan (Spectrum Analysis) - PMP - Cambium Community

PMP 450: Run a tower scan (Spectrum Analysis)

knowledge-base

Cambium_SriMani (Sri) #1 December 11, 2022, 1:56am

Summary:

This article demonstrates how to run a tower scan in a PMP 450 deployment.

Cause:

Support team requests to provide spectrum analyzer results to investigate issues like degraded performance, slow
speeds, and link drop to name a few. This purpose is to understand if the source of interference impacts the uplink
or downlink.

Solution: Run a Tower scan

Every transmitter displays the transmission properties as displayed below:

Let us consider a 360-degree tower with four 90-degree sectors using ABAB channel reuse.

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In this case, when the spectrum analysis is started on one sector the remaining 3 sectors will continue to transmit.
The resulting analysis would display skewed results.

Here is a sample of spectrum analysis run individually vs simultaneously (both scans are from the same tower):

Individual scans run at different times.

Simultaneous scans: We can observe lower noise levels in this scan compared individual scans shown in the
previous image.

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The scans above are a clear indication of the accuracy of the results when individually vs run simultaneously.
Hence, performing a tower scan when troubleshooting interference is always suggested.
To perform the tower scan, login to all the involved APs through the web browser, set the display to Averaging, set
min and max to full scan, scan duration to 180 seconds, and click on start timed spectrum analysis.

4 Likes

CBRS: frequency and/or channel bandwidth change on PMP 450 series

Eric_Ozrelic (Eric Ozrelic) #2 December 11, 2022, 9:36am

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It would be very cool to be able to start this job in cnMaestro for all AP’s in a Tower group for a specific band.
Could a JSON script be crafted and then pushed out to a specific group of radios to do this?

5 Likes

Charlie (Charlie) #3 December 12, 2022, 5:53pm

Agreed. This is already under plan. I don’t have an ETA yet, however.

1 Like

Kevin_Simms (Kevin Simms) #4 December 15, 2022, 8:25pm

Even better, let me schedule a scan with cnMaestro for my entire network at the same time.

2 Likes

castarritt (castarritt) #5 December 16, 2022, 10:17pm

My wildest dream would be for cnmaestro to not only scan with all the APs at the same time, but also all the SMs,
and then show an averaged aggregate result of all SMs on each AP.

1 Like

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