This episode of our Solution Series covers the essential nature of surge protection, demonstrating products from one of our trusted partners, Transtector. As a part of the Infinite Electronics portfolio, Transtector provides innovative power and signal integrity solutions that ensure reliable operation of critical systems for a connected world. Read the transcript below as our host, Jeff, reinforces the value of planning and investing in surge protection at installation sites.
Surge suppression solutions from Transtector
Surge Protection - Often an Under-Investment
Welcome to the Solution Series brought to you by DoubleRadius and hosted by, yours truly, Jeff Holdenrid. I’m really excited today because surge protection is something that is very important to me.
In my opinion surge protection is probably one of the most under-invested items in a network, in a wireless network or even in a wireline network. Surge protection is so important, and yet so few companies actually do it right.
So today I am going to highlight a company called Transtector. They are known all over the world as being experts at surge protection, protecting your network equipment from lightning, static discharge, and other electrical power surges. They are experts in this field and have been around for over 50 years.
In many cases, when customers start a new deployment, they just purchase the surge protection that is offered by the radio manufacturer. But why? Why would you trust a radio manufacturer with your surge instead of trusting a manufacturer that only does surge?
If it was me, I would trust the surge manufacturer, ie, Transector. They've been doing this for over half a century, and specialize in it, saving you time and money. And let's be honest, that is what we really care about.
Small Investments in Surge Suppression Pays off in Big Ways
So what is the cost of time? You have a $100, $200, $300 radio sitting on a house. But is that the cost to replace it? No! It takes time to take that support call. It takes time to pull gear. It takes time to schedule the service tech or tower crew to swap the gear, and time to physically swap it. All of that costs money. Do the math and figure out what it really costs. Investing a little bit of money into proper surge protection and grounding can save you thousands, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
When you deploy surge solution correctly, you always want to have a surge at the top and the bottom of your cable and isolate the energy. This provides protection to both your radio and also your rack or enclosure.
Chassis for Indoor Ground
First, we have this excellent rack mount piece. This does zero for surge. It’s just a nice neat little chassis that sits in your rack. It has 16 slots, and they also make a smaller version of this that can be DIN rail mounted and has four slots.
Transtector 16 slot chassis, with ethernet cards taking one slot and DC cards taking two slots
What exactly goes into this? In my hands we have these two little cards, we have the CAT5 Cat6 POE card and we have a DC card. I've said before that this has 16 slots, the ethernet cards take one slot, the DC cards take 2 slots. So if you run only DC then this can support 8 cards, but you can intermingle these however you want.
This is how you would kind of clean up your chassis, clean up your rack inside your hut, and this would be your ground surge to put down at the ground level. For those of you that listened to our series on EUPEN and Raycap, this would be a perfect ground solution to marry with their cable and tower break out box.
Choosing the Right Outdoor Surge Device
So we've covered the ground solution, But what do you put up on top? Now we have the outdoor devices, and this is the first one we’re going to showcase. The ALPU Fit is a very popular product, and this one here is actually a POE++ .
Transtector ALPU Fit POE++
They make a light version of this that is POE+. You have your ethernet ports you run your cables through, terminate cables. You have a ground lug, for grounding obviously and there you go.
These devices need to be mounted as close to the radios as possible. Just to keep energy from joining the line, basically. This is plastic. You just zip tie it or hose clamp it, or however you want to fasten to the tower. Quick, simple, easy. We see a lot of these going off the shelf.
So Let’s say you’re in the industrial space, maybe you need something a little more robust. They also make the same kind of device but in a metal enclosure for hazardous environments. As you can tell it also has ground lugs on either side, to make things simple for you to ground your device, dissipating the energy. And you have your ethernet ports as before.
Metal enclosure device for hazardous environments
This one in particular you can actually insert power directly into the surge if you want to do it separately. They make a lot of different products so make sure you contact your sales and figure out which one is the right one for you.
DC Power vs POE
Now, LTE and license point-to-point radios have become more and more common. Most of those devices can be cabled with DC instead of POE, and we highly recommend you
do this! The first thing to pop in a static discharge is that ethernet port, so if you have ability to power your devices by DC please do.
Plastic box with DC on both sides, ground log, and giant grommets
The plastic box has DC on both sides, we have our ground log, and then we have these giant grommets at the bottom. This will support your larger cables like your 12 gauge cables, even bigger than that, so if you’re running heavy DC cable I highly recommend this model here.
Industrial version with metal enclosure, supporting up to 14 gauge cable
On the industrial side, same principle but in the metal enclosure. These will support up to a 14 gauge cable, but once again, you have your positive and negative and you also have your ground lugs on the outside. Mount these close the radios, it makes life a lot easier.
Get Help Selecting the Right Surge Protection
These are some of the solutions, and as I’ve mentioned before, there are a lot of parts and pieces. There's a lot of indoor and outdoor pieces so make sure you talk to your sales rep, make sure you do your research, and make sure you get the right product for your business.
I hope this was beneficial. Please reach out to us let us know if you want to learn more about surge, more about grounding, or learn more common practices that could save your time and energy.
Watch the Transtector Surge Video Now
If you are interested in Transtector surge solutions or have any questions, please contact our sales team today. Please take the time now to enjoy this video by clicking the link below. We hope you find this information helpful on Transector and surge protection!
