Case Study: Water Utility Upgrades to 10Gbps Licensed Microwave Link for SCADA and WAN Connectivity A leading municipal water utility depends on a robust wireless backhaul network to support its SCADA telemetry and wide area network (WAN) communications across hundreds of remote sites. The network architecture is built on a redundant ring topology, with North and South rings providing dual-route redundancy to each site via licensed microwave radios. The Challenge: Increasing Bandwidth Demand at the Network Core At the heart of this wireless network lies a central tower location where both ring systems converge. The utility’s headquarters-to-core link had become a critical bottleneck, as demand for higher data throughput and future expansion capacity grew. The solution needed to deliver ultra-high bandwidth, carrier-grade reliability, and seamless failover. The Solution: 10Gbps Full Duplex Licensed Microwave Link with 1Gbps Redundant Backup To meet performance and reliability goals, Alpha Omega Wireless engineered and deployed a point-to-point licensed multi-band 10Gbps full duplex microwave link, with a 1Gbps full duplex licensed backup path on the same antennas. Key features of this wireless backhaul upgrade include: • 10Gbps full duplex throughput, delivering fiber-like speed over the air • 1Gbps full duplex redundant link, providing automatic failover for mission-critical uptime • Adaptive modulation, allowing the radio to automatically step down throughput in poor conditions, ranging from 10Gbps down to 1Gbps • 99.999% link reliability, even during weather events or alignment issues • Sub-millisecond switching, ensuring transitions are seamless and undetectable by users or SCADA systems This enhanced wireless link ensures uninterrupted communication between the utility’s operations center and its network core, while providing scalability for future needs. The Results: High-Capacity Wireless Backhaul with Carrier-Grade Reliability Installation of the new 10Gbps wireless link was completed in just two days, with immediate performance gains and built-in failover protection. The utility now benefits from a future-ready, high-capacity outdoor wireless network that supports advanced SCADA applications and WAN traffic without the cost or delays of fiber infrastructure.