Hey All, Quick question for you that I am attempting to ascertain some more information on. The agency I work for uses multiple antenna sites to receive radio transmissions from different agencies we work with. Ideally we would love to connect into their systems directly but that is not an option due to other issues.
So, take NYC for example, we have three radio reception sites (two in NYC proper and one in NJ near the bridge). Through these three sites we are able to receive all communications we need throughout the entirety of NYC. We are merely receiving and not transmitting whatsoever.
We are looking to move out to another area on the west coast, specifically San Francisco, and have acquired a USB Spectrum Analyzer from Signal Hound, some filters, antennas, a laptop, etc to go to potential sites to monitor channels to see how well they are received from locations. We should've done this in NYC as well but we got lucky with our previous method.
Anyways, onto my question, I understand the basics of how a Spectrum Analyzer works, I understand tuning into specific frequencies to see any interfering signals, and identifying "strong" vs "weak" signal sites. My issue is superiors want an actual numeric value to assign to these sites and documentation to prove which sites are better then others so we can decide where to go with. Unfortunately they have zero knowledge on radio systems, how they work, how radio frequencies actually transmit and receive, etc and Ive tried explaining multiple times but its not their forte.
What would you all recommend to use as a numeric value of interpretation that I can use in documentation that sticks out simply (with pictures from the SA software) that is easy for them to understand without getting too technical? Im a technical person and am just looking for some help, as well I do admit I don't know everything but would love to learn some more technical information myself to make me better at this. Thanks in advance.
So, take NYC for example, we have three radio reception sites (two in NYC proper and one in NJ near the bridge). Through these three sites we are able to receive all communications we need throughout the entirety of NYC. We are merely receiving and not transmitting whatsoever.
We are looking to move out to another area on the west coast, specifically San Francisco, and have acquired a USB Spectrum Analyzer from Signal Hound, some filters, antennas, a laptop, etc to go to potential sites to monitor channels to see how well they are received from locations. We should've done this in NYC as well but we got lucky with our previous method.
Anyways, onto my question, I understand the basics of how a Spectrum Analyzer works, I understand tuning into specific frequencies to see any interfering signals, and identifying "strong" vs "weak" signal sites. My issue is superiors want an actual numeric value to assign to these sites and documentation to prove which sites are better then others so we can decide where to go with. Unfortunately they have zero knowledge on radio systems, how they work, how radio frequencies actually transmit and receive, etc and Ive tried explaining multiple times but its not their forte.
What would you all recommend to use as a numeric value of interpretation that I can use in documentation that sticks out simply (with pictures from the SA software) that is easy for them to understand without getting too technical? Im a technical person and am just looking for some help, as well I do admit I don't know everything but would love to learn some more technical information myself to make me better at this. Thanks in advance.