Cost Effective Adaptive Modulation for Microwave Link Availability Improvement in Plain, Hilly Terrain, Water Bodies

Every Telecom Operator is concerned about availability of Microwave link as they are including availability guarantee of 99.999% in SLA. While achieving availability of 99.999%, installation cost is another major factor in consideration due to severe market competition. Three critical microwave links for availability improvement in plain terrain, hilly terrain and water bodies were considered for observation. First traditional techniques of availability improvement such as space diversity, frequency diversity were tried out but these techniques neither gave expected results nor saved cost. Finally new feature of IP radio i.e. adaptive modulation was used to achieve desired availability of 99.999% without increasing installation cost. Adaptive modulation is responsible for improvement in effective fade margin caused availability improvement of microwave link.