HPWREN establishes its first OC3-capacity link

During the first week of January 2008, HPWREN established its first OC3-capacity (about 155 megabits per second each direction at full-duplex) wireless link across about 12 miles between the Cuyamaca and Laguna mountains in San Diego County, which started to pass production traffic immediately. It replaced previous license-exempt radios with the new licensed connection, which finally established the HPWREN loop between the coast and the mountains as all-licensed.

The installation team included Pablo Bryant (San Diego State University), Ron Serabia, Bud Hale, Jim Hale, and Hans-Werner Braun. Jim Hale had the overall responsibility for the antenna installation planning and execution.

These images show the 8-foot ultra-high-performance antennas for the two end-points of the wireless OC3 link. The image on the right shows Pablo Bryant and Ron Serabia during the installation.

Besides replacing a remaining license-exempt link of the loop, this is also the prototype for three more OC3-capacity links, to replace existing DS3-capacity ones (about 45 megabits per second) from the coast to the Palomar Observatory, which is driven by the high traffic loads that the Palomar Observatory injects into the HPWREN backbone. Those three segments are at distances of about 18, 22, and 29 miles. The Palomar Observatory is carrying a significant fraction of the cost for the upgrade.