Cell tower Microwave dishes and capacity

The microwave dishes send the calls back to the main switch so they can be routed to wherever they are going. Usually the microwaves do hop along a few towers before making their way back oto the switch (usually not more than 5 or 6 times max, or at least that's what I've seen). It can also be done via fixed-lines, so you don't always see a microwave dish.

As for how many calls, there's so many variables it's hard to say. But roughly somewhere in the 100-to-300 calls per tower range.

 

what do you mean tower range?

 

Like for the range of an area that a tower covers (coverage area for one tower), usually an individual tower can process 100 to 300 calls.

 

Actually I meant the range of calls being between 100 to 300, but you can also interpret it as the range of the tower.
PS- The range of the tower (ie: how far you can make calls from the tower) also varies alot. Usually between less than a mile in cities to around 10-20 miles in rural areas (sometimes even more under certain conditions).

 

yea i work for a company that does RF engineering and Microwave engineering (i'm in the IT dept.)
so i get coverage area. so the 'range' of calls is actually the capacity of calls the tower can support right?

also my co-worker has told me that if a tower reaches capacity it does not send via microwave the call to another tower to 'share the load', the microwave is used generally only to send the calls to the root hub or backhaul. he also said that back in the day (don't know what kind of time frame that is) they would do something called extender towers when in a tower is placed close to another tower and both towers run at a lower power range and would share the data over voice channels to spread the load out and increase capacity. don't know how accurate that is as i am not an RF or Microwave engineer.

 

Yes. Something like 50-300 calls per tower is a rough idea.

Correct. Load sharing is not done via microwave

Right again (to the switch)