Hey All.
Is setting a particular gateway TX_Power (dbm) per device/downlink transmission a thing?
Or is the downlink always going to be at the same TX power level all the time?
I ask because I think it would be cool to be able to trim down the DL power so the whole noise level is reduced to the absolute minimum.
Or is there something I’m missing ?
(Yes I know we need to not send too many downlinks)…
Cheers
Just when I was thinking the whole World had stopped caring about how much interference their radio systems were causing to other users, with the primary obsessions seem to be about increasing power, along you come and want to know how to reduce power.
Amazing.
The back-end will instruct regarding the power to be used by a gateway for each transmission. This will (should) be based on the signal strength of the reception of the preceding uplink received by that particular gateway.
Yeah, I want to be a good neighbour, and save energy at the gateway!
Hi Jac, Oh interesting. Thanks for the information.
So like a ADR for the downlink side?
I want to have a femto gateway setup with say 100m range max, thus set a low DL TX power (or max DL TX_Power to say 8dBm.
P
Interesting idea, but utterly incompatible with, and thus not allowed on TTN.
In TTN all gateways are for the use of all users - you don’t get to say “this is only for my nodes” and the network has no way to know your transmitter is weakened, so it’s going to choose your gateway for transmission any time it does the best job of receiving someone else’s node.
If you want to do something private, you have to run your own server.
Adjusting the downlink power to the actual need is a good idea, but only the network server is in a position to make such adjustment. The gateway is supposed to do exactly what it is told to for that transmission by the network server, no more, no less.
As mentioned by @cslorabox that would create an asymmetric setup because you would potentially still receive data from nodes further away. The back-end, not knowing you artificially lowered your transmission power would choose your gateway as the best downlink path to a node and as a result the data never arrives resulting in a TTN user wondering why OTAA activation fails when there is a gateway ‘around the corner’.
For the community network your gateway should be transparent and transmit at the actual power instructed by the back-end.
If you want your gateway to become weaker, just put an 10dB or 20dB attenuator between the antenna-connector and the antenna.
Or put your gateway in the cellar.
Hi Wolfgang, Good tip, thank-you.
If you are going to hobble your gateway, please ensure it is not on the TTN community servers for the reasons given above.
Being ‘cool’ is not a good reason.