Chapter 2a – Installation
02a-WaveCore-Installation
In this chapter, we’ll take a look at the WaveCore installation procedures. Let’s focus on some best practices and information to gather when installing the WaveCore.
When incorporating the WaveCore into your design, here are a few things that you should take into consideration and document during a site walk. How will the WaveCore be mounted? Will the provided short mounting bracket, which is designed to be flush mounted to your ceiling, floor or walls be suffice, or is the optional long mounting bracket required?
Will the WaveCore be powered via POE or 12 volt DC adapter? Is power redundancy required? Will the ethernet port be utilized or do you need an optional SFP+ module? Has the WaveCore channel and bandwidth been taken into consideration if my existing or future network will be Wi-Fi 7 based?
What materials will the WaveCore link need to penetrate? Have you validated the link budget with the VineCalculator on Airvine’s website? We will take a deeper dive into many of these questions on the following slides.
every WaveCore link will include two WaveCore nodes and two pairs of short mounting bracket kits, which will come preassembled on each node. Additional optional accessories are available as well, which would include short mounting bracket kit, which will be additional beyond the ones that are included.
Long mounting bracket kit, single spare WaveCore, the mounting brackets are not included with this option. Various optical and copper SFP+ transceivers. POE injector or AC/DC power adapter with region based power cord and per device extended warranty and support.
As noted, the short mounting bracket kit is included with every WaveCore link and is designed to flush mount to a wall, floor or ceiling. The optional long mounting bracket kit is available and allows the WaveCore to be installed in any direction, providing 360 degrees of rotation.
The bolt that connects the bracket to the WaveCore is a 1/4″-20. That is 3/4″ long. This means the diameter of the bolt is one 1/4″ and that there are 20 threads per inch. Custom installations can be done connecting the WaveCore with this size bolt.
The short mounting bracket does come pre-attached to the WaveCore, but if swapped to a long mounting bracket, or if you detach and need to reattach the short mounting bracket, follow these simple steps. Place the external tooth lock washer in the inset of the side of the WaveCore you’re attaching the bracket to. Place the 1/4″ steel split lock washer and flat washer on the 1/4″ bolt.
Insert the bolt through the mounting bracket and external tooth lock washer and attach the bolt to the WaveCore. When routing your cables, remove the interface bay by pinching the two locking tabs and gently pull straight out. Route and attach required cables through the mount bracket through the interface bay.
The mounting bracket is designed not to exceed the bend radius if utilizing an optional SFP+ module. Reattach the interface bay and mounting bracket covers, the cable should all be concealed to the location that the WaveCore is mounted to. Note: it may be required to first install cables in the wall so that the cables will protrude out the wall or ceiling hole.
Special consideration may be required based on your installation scenario.
Installing the WaveCore, a concrete, brick, wood, plaster, or drywall is as simple as selecting the appropriate type of screw. Some installations may be unique or require additional planning. The installation shown at the bottom of this slide was to a T-bar suspended ceiling.
T-bar clips were utilized to secure the mounting brackets to the T-bar rail with the cabling routed through the drop ceiling panel, providing a clean, secure look once finished.
Here we show the dimensions of the WaveCore with mounting bracket attached.
Most values are in millimeters with a few major items also noted in inches. Key values to point out here would be the holes of the mounting bracket, which are either seven millimeters round or seven millimeters by 10 millimeters oval shaped.
The WaveCore can be powered by an AC/DC adapter, POE injector, or POE switch. The recommended AC/DC adapter is the Airvine AC/DC 36 watt power adapter, as it has current limiting capability to not exceed three amps to protect the system for potential damage. The recommended POE injector is the Airvine 802.3at 10 gigabit POE power adapter. It has current limiting capability not to exceed 600 milliamps. Passive injectors are not recommended. Both adapters come with a 1.8 meter cord where the XX in the model number denotes the country for proper end plug consideration. When ordering either adapter, please include the proper two digit country code of where the WaveCore is going to be deployed to ensure that no delay is added to your project timeline. If power redundancy is a concern, the WaveCore can safely be powered by both 12 volt DC adapter and POE simultaneously
WaveCore nodes can also be powered by power sourcing equipment or PSE that is compliant with the 802.3at standard. A WaveCore node has a power draw of 25.5 watts maximum, with 20 watts being a typical draw. The Airvine WaveTunnel Bridge is compliant with the 802.3at up to 30 watts and 802.3bt up to 60 watts and can be used to power WaveCore bridges.
If you’re not familiar with our WaveTunnel product, it’s a 60 gigahertz indoor point-to-point-to-point radio design to penetrate most indoor walls and beam around corners. It has a built-in four port ethernet switch which can power the WaveCore, aps, cameras, or other iot devices. To learn more about the WaveTunnel, please visit Airvine.com for more information.
Utilizing Airvine’s VineCalculator allows users to input link parameters such as country of origin, frequency band, channel bandwidth, and other type of thickness of materials the signal will need to penetrate, for example, drywall, concrete, glass or wood It then provides an estimate of achievable link margin.
The results provided will show a summary with green, orange, or red color coding. Clicking the dropdown menu labeled definition of WaveCore calculator results will provide high level details of the results and terminology used. Selecting the show more detailed information dropdown menu will provide more granular details of the inputted scenario.
Here I’m gonna show a live demo of using the VineCalculator. As you can see in the title bar, I am at Airvine.com, the main site. If I scroll over here to the right, I can see support. If I click on support, I’ll go to that page. One thing to note, we’re gonna scroll down a little bit. There is great information, all your firmware is gonna be underneath downloads technical documents is gonna have a lot of good information to find, plus user manuals, frequently asked questions, things along those lines. But for this example, we’re gonna keep scrolling down till we see the VineCalculator section. We’re gonna click on demo.
Now, there is a separate VineCalculator for the WaveTunnel on the left and the WaveCore on the right. For this example, we’re gonna be sticking with the WaveCore. We’ll click on it. We can see all of our parameters. First thing I’m gonna change is my units. I’m using feet and inches for everything I have, so I’m just gonna stick with that.
For this example, I’m just gonna say we have six inches of concrete with rebar. So I’ll select it and then I’m gonna change my thickness to six to represent six inches. I am gonna change my bandwidth. I’m gonna go for the max speed, so I’m gonna go 320MHz. And then I’m just gonna say that I have a foot of distance in between my two units which this is the distance between your controller node and your subordinate node.
If you’re going from floor to ceiling, you may have. Roughly 10 feet of distance in between the two, where that extra distance is just considered free space path loss. So from here if I needed to, I could change my country, but I am in the US so everything else looks good. I’m gonna click on Calculate.
We get our results and we can see if I click on the definition of WaveCore calculator results. Inside here is gonna give us the definitions for the different color coatings and then the terms used. So CN is for controller node and SN for subordinate node. If I click on that box, I can drop it back down.
Now if I click on show more detailed information. Once I click on that, it’s gonna show what values it was using to create these results. So we can see the channel, frequency and bandwidth that we had selected. The channel and frequency were automatically chosen. The, there’s a fixed transmit power, so those are at 14.
These are our estimated RSSI values that we’d have in between our controller and subordinate node. And then ultimately what we’re looking at is our throughput rate. What we’re gonna be able to get. So right now this is a layer one type information that it’s providing. So it’s saying that we’d be able to get the max throughput which is a 11 gig, essentially through this on a layer one perspective.
You’re gonna have overheads, things along those lines once you get into the layer two throughput. But just know that this is gonna be able to have a good, strong connection. If I click on close my window, I can make some changes. So obviously we knew, we saw that we had 11 there. If I dropped my bandwidth and I changed that by half, essentially I should see roughly the same information, but about half of my bandwidth.
Because I’m taking my 320MHz and I’m cutting it in half to 160 . If I was to do the same thing and drop it down to 80, I’m gonna see this roughly go to two and a half to three gig per second. If I change this back to my three 20, and I’m just gonna show you, I’m gonna change my thickness to eight inches, so I’m going for my max throughput.
I still just got a foot between the two and I’ve got eight inches of concrete going through it. Now it’s showing me that I have more on the orange color. Main reason I’m gonna show you this is just because the color is orange doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna be bad results. We’re gonna have a little more density, of concrete to go through so our RSSI values are a little bit weaker. But when it comes to our layer one maximum throughput, it’s still saying that we’re gonna be able to get 10 gig through there. This doesn’t necessarily mean orange is bad, it’s just a matter of how strong or how weak the link may be.
Keep in mind every scenario is gonna be a little bit different. And especially when you go out testing, no two concrete walls are necessarily the same, but this is a great starting point to find out, can I get through X, Y, Z? Let me start with the VineCalculator, get some results and from there we’re able to take it to the next step.
Pre-staging or pre-configuring the WaveCore links is not mandatory, but is highly recommended. This allows you to validate if the link is operational, update the firmware to the latest version and make any desired network changes before mounting it to its final Permanent location. Units can be set up on a desk and facing each other with some separation during this step. To pre-stage the WaveCores, follow these basic steps. Remove the WaveCore from their boxes, and ensure that you have all the desired final configuration, which would include proper mounting bracket, desired power solution, and optional SFP+ modules. Get your laptop, tablet, or smartphone with standard browser ready that will connect to the WaveCore, either by ethernet cable or the 2.4GHz wireless maintenance network.
Power on and connect to the controller node. Visit Airvine.com to confirm that you have the latest version of firmware installed. Update the network settings if desired. This will complete the setup of the controller node. Next, power on and connect to the subordinate node and repeat these same steps to complete the configuration.
Details on connecting to the WaveCore, modifying network settings, and updating the firmware will be covered in upcoming slides.
The default wired ethernet management, IP address, and wireless wifi management details are shown here. DHCP is the default configuration of the WaveCore. If a DHCP server cannot be reached upon boot up, the system will configure the default static IP address, which is 192.168.0.250.
When DHCP is utilized, the assigned IP address needs to be utilized to login via ethernet connection. With the default login of admin and password of admin. It’s recommended to change the default management IP address, so each node has a different IP address for installation.
Worded differently if you do not connect to a DHCP server. The IP address will be the 0.250 address that’s listed. To connect , you will direct your browser to this IP address. If you were to change the IP address with your DHCP server, you’re gonna go to that new IP address.
Either way, you will use the login and password of admin and admin. To connect via the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi management network. Direct your PC, tablet or phone to the SSID , beginning with avb_, and then the MAC address of the device that you’re trying to connect to. You’ll see two separate, one for the controller and one for the subordinate node.
The password to log into the SSID is airvine!, all in lowercase. Open your browser to 192.168.3.1 to log into the WebGUI with the credentials of admin and admin.