What is Microwave?
Electromagnetic waves having frequencies between 1GHz to 300GHz (it may be 300MHz to 300GHz) are called microwaves.
Properties of Microwaves:
Microwave are unidirectional. This means that when an antenna transmits microwaves, they travel in one direction. That is why microwave propagation is line of sight (LOS) propagation. They are not reflected by ionosphere. High frequency microwaves can not penetrate an object like wall.
Advantages and disadvantages of microwaves:
Due to above properties, microwaves have following advantages and disadvantages:
- Due to line of sight propagation, a pair of antennas can be aligned without interfering with another pair of aligned antennas.
- Due to wide frequency bandwidth, high data transfer rate is possible.
- Due to line of sight propagation, it can be transmitted long distance. But a problem is faced due to its penetration properties. It can not be transfer inside a bound area. Also its transformation has obstacles like hills trees, mountains, earth curvature etc. That is why we need repeaters or tall towers for long distance transmission.
- As they are not reflected by ionosphere, they can be used for space transmission.