Superior Essex sells a 16/2 and a 16/4 with outdoor jacket for use on
towers.
You could also run a higher gauge wire that will carry the necessary
total amperage and split it at the top with terminal blocks. You might
need something burly for that, like for four Telrad 1000 BTS's at
100watts each you'd want at least 6ga THHN going up in a 1/2" conduit,
and you'd have around 5% heat loss at 100m. But that's a smaller
footprint on the tower than 16/4 x 4, or 16ga THHN x 16.
My quick figuring with home depot prices says it's cheaper to run the
pair of 6ga than to run a bundle of 16ga. If you bump up to 4ga it's
still cheaper than running all 16's, but by less margin. The downside
of course is that you can't power cycle an individual unit, and
maintenance (like replacing DC SS) would affect everything instead of
just the one unit.
If you did run one big cable up, you'd still need individual outdoor
jacketed cables to branch out to the base stations.
I'm not sure of the cost difference vs Superior Essex, but I've also
seen outdoor speaker wire at 16ga.
------ Original Message ------
From: "Craig Schmaderer" <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Sent: 9/16/2016 5:24:43 PM
Subject: [AFMUG] DC tower cable bundle
Looking for advice on what my options are for running 16 DC conductors
around 16 awg to power LTE and/or medusa radios on a tower. Hybrid
fiber option would be ok too. I know I have seen Verizon on some of
our towers use the hybrid cables. Thanks, Craig.
Craig R. Schmaderer
CEO | Skywave Wireless, Inc.
Ph: 402-372-1975 | Fax: 402-372-1058
Direct: 402-372-1052
