Excellent News. On September 7, 2009, Radwin will release its new 2.3 software for the very popular Radwin 2000 multi-band radios. The four new functions of 2.3 will not only appeal to carriers - but to all customers requiring easy installation, reliability and flexibility in congested, unlicensed air space.
Spectrum Viewer
The first and perhaps the flashiest of the new features is a spectrum viewer that offers four windows (one for each transmitter on both ends of the hop) with a view of the RF activity in a given band. In less than 10 seconds, the viewer displays a color-coded snapshot of the RF noise, highlighting and distinguishing radar interference, weather radar, and other unlicensed radios including dB levels. This snapshot allows the installer to choose a clean channel and even setup fall-back channels for the automation channel selection feature, should that be necessary at a future time. The spectrum viewer can also be used in trouble shooting the radios at a later date to determine if interference is the issue causing a problem. Since the Radwin 2000 is a multi-band radio offering all the bands between 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz, the spectrum viewer makes this radio the most flexible on the market - by far.
Hub Site Synchronization
Radwin has been offering its software-based hub site synchronization (HSS) in the WinLink 1000 radios for the past 2 years. This feature allows installation of multiple radios (8) at a hub site and prevents the radios from interfering with each other. The new HSS extends the feature to the Radwin 2000 radios and expands the number of radios to 16. Also, it allows the user to mix and match WinLink 1000 radios with Radwin 2000 regardless of band or channel width.
Monitored Hot Standby
Most of the licensed radio vendors offer customers with mission-critical links the option of installing two links and automatically 'failing-over' to the second link if the first link becomes disabled. However, up until now, none of the unlicensed vendors have offered this feature. Radwin is the first to introduce this function across both the Radwin 2000 and the WinLink 1000 for both Ethernet and T1 traffic.
Therefore, it is possible to use the less expensive WinLink 1000 to back-up the Radwin 2000. Or, a Radwin 2000 with 16 T1 circuits can be backed up by another Radwin 2000 with 16 T1 circuits. The time for fail over is less than 50ms and in most cases, it really is less than 25ms.
Diversity.
The last, but perhaps one of the most useful of the new features is the ability to support diversity with both dual pole and single pole antennas. Diversity is the ability to transmit the same data over two or more diverse paths, thus increasing the likelihood that the information will be received. The Radwin 2000 can now be configured to send the same data stream over two different paths or different data over two different paths. The former cuts the throughput by 50% but overcomes interference and LOS obstacles. The latter increases the throughput under good conditions and maximizes the radio's utilization. There may be many instances where a user only needs 50 Mbps throughput, but has a difficult hop and diversity is the answer. In other situations, there may not be any transmission challenges and the user can take advantage of the full 100 Mbps throughput of the Radwin 2000.
The four new features will make the Radwin 2000 impossible to beat on feature, function or price. List prices for a full hop start at $4660.
Here's the Radwin 2000 Datasheet.