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What is a Diversity Kit?
In RF technologies, you talk about antenna diversity if you have two or more antennas for one transceiver. This is often necessary
to provide a seamless functionality while receiving or transmitting, or to increase the receiving quality.
The EPAK Diversity Kit is combining the free line of sight ranges of 2 antennas: once one antenna is blocked in sight, the other
antenna seamlessly takes over the satellite connection. This requires a high performance switching device, that can split and reroute
RF signals nearly immediately.
The VSAT DivKit is designed for combining all EPAK VSAT antennas.
2 Contents
Your delivery contains the following components:
1x EPAK 19" VSAT DivKit
2x F/TNC RG6 coaxial cable 1,5m
4x TNC/TNC RG6 coaxial cable, 1,5m
3x Ethernet patch CAT5e cable, 1m
1x 24V power supply
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Installing the EPAK VSAT DivKit
For regular cabling scheme see 4.3 - A.
For advanced cabling scheme with lock modem see 4.3 - B.
Step 1
Check that all required components and cables are there.
Step 2
Place the VSAT DivKit in the rack or at its other final place.
Rack mount: For ease of handling follow the installation through and fix it only in the last step.
Step 3
Connect the RX and TX port of the traffic modem with the TX MDM and RX MDM port of the DivKit using the sup-
plied coaxial F/TNC cables.
Step 4
Connect the RX out and TX out ports from the master ACU with the ANT1 RX and the ANT1 TX ports of the DivKit
with the supplied coaxial TNC/TNC cables.
Step 5
Repeat step 4 for the slave ACU and the respective ANT2 RX and ANT2 TX ports of the DivKit.
Step 6
Connect the modem, ACUs and the DivKit Switch ports with the supplied Ethernet patch cables. Choose the most
left Ethernet port, RJ45(7) in Fig. 2, to be the slave ACU WAN port, RJ45(6) to be the slave lock modem port, RJ45(5)
to be the traffic WAN port of the traffic modem, RJ45(4) to be the port for the master lock modem, RJ45(3) to be
the WAN port of the master ACU and RJ45(1) the port of the router for ships vessels network. RJ45(2) is a port for
miscellaneous use and normally remains unused.
NOTE: The choice for the LAN ports are only recommendations. It does not matter for functionality but it facilitates
orientation for support staff.
Step 7
Plug in the DC power jack of the supplied power adapter into the DC connector at the DivKit's rear side.
Step 8
Power up the modem and ACUs, at the beginning both lock LEDs of the DivKit should turn green. Afterwards it will
keep the state of the last run.
Step 9
Turn the rocker switch to AUTO. If the ACUs have connection to the antennas, and those have locked to the proper
satellite signal, both Lock LEDs will stay green.
Step 10
Now turn the rocker switch from AUTO to ANT2 and then to ANT1. You will see how first Active LED ANT 2 turns on
and then LED ANT 1 turns on while LED ANT 2 is turning off.
Step 11
As the final step the signal power levels of the two antennas have to be equalized in order to ensure seamless hand
over. This has to be done for both ways RX and TX. Please see chapter 4.4.2 for further information.
