Grounding Solutions

Lightning is a major risk to your wireless network. That's why we offer a full line of grounding and surge protector products from leading manufacturers such as Polyphaser, Tripp Lite, Andrew, Harger, Huber + Suhner and more. Protect your investment with our full range of lightning arrestors and testing products.

Grounding Overview

With copper and steel making up most of the material used on a standard wireless site, your investment of up to one million dollars in equipment is susceptible to damage caused by a lightning strike. While no grounding system can fully protect a site from a direct strike, a properly grounded site can limit damage to a minimum.  From ground kits for cable to exothermic connections to your site's ground ring, TESSCO can provide a solution that will help protect your site.

Check out our Grounding Illustrated Applications. (PDF)

Grounding a Site

Electricity is looking for the simplest path to the Earth. At a non-grounded site, the simplest path for electricity starts with the copper coaxial cable and leads right through the site’s equipment to the grounded power source, destroying virtually everything in its path.  A properly ground site creates a simpler, straighter path for the electricity to follow to the Earth’s surface that by-passes the site’s equipment.

Exclusive Web Special from TESSCO

TESSCO is now offering Harger's Universal Grounding Lugs for number 2 and 6 wires in convenient and affordable bulk packaging. Reduce packaging waste while you save money and installation time. These lugs are made of high conductivity wrought copper and finished with an electro tin plating. They are UL listed and feature an inspection well.

This special offer ends March 31, 2008.

Two Sizes are Available:

#6 wire two hole long barrel lug. One 3/8" hole and one universal slotted hole for spacing between .75" and 1". 250 pack.
#2 stranded wire universal Long Barrel 2 hole lug. Features 1 round 3/8" hole and a slot for spacing between .75" & 1". 250 Pack.

The Soil

Designing a grounding system for a wireless site starts with testing the soil using a Ground Resistance Tester to find the point of lowest resistivity based on the electrolytes in the soil. Resistivity is the key factor that determines the resistance of a grounding electrode and the depth to which the electrode must be driven for low ground resistance. Dry soil with few soluble salts has a very high resistivity, which makes it more difficult for electricity to disperse into the soil. You may need chemical ground rods and ground enhancement material, which add electrolytes to the soil, to improve your grounding success.

Connections

Strong, reliable connections are a must in any grounding system to ensure that a lightning strike travels to the Earth and not to the site’s equipment.

Crimping Ground Lugs

Ground lugs connect ground wires to a centralized location, usually a ground bar.  Many types of lugs can be used depending on your grounding system’s requirements or your preferences. They are sized on the same scale as ground wire and the correct size must be used for a proper and reliable connection. A lug crimper (mechanical or electrical) must be used with a correctly-sized die to ensure a proper connection between the wire and the lug is created.

Attaching Lugs to Ground Bars

Because copper is highly corrosive, ground bars are coated with a lacquer. Before attaching a ground lug to a ground bar, the lacquer must be removed using sand paper. A joint compound  should then be applied to improve the connection and help to prevent corrosion of the ground bar.

Exothermic Connections

When connecting copper-to-copper or copper-to-steel, an exothermic ground connection is the best solution.  Since many connections are found in wet ground or corrosive environments, molecular welds from exothermic processes are far superior to and longer lasting than mechanical or compression connections.

Molds

There are many product options, including re-usable graphite mold or a one-use, all inclusive ceramic mold called "One Shots."   Each mold is designed for specific wire, ground rod and steel pipe sizes and come in a variety of configurations depending on the application need.  Once the pieces to be welded are correctly inserted into the mold, weld metal is poured into the mold and ignited, and the high temperature reaction occurs safely within the mold and creates a permanent solid molecular bond between the metals. With proper care and cleaning, graphite molds can be used for up to 50 exothermic connections.

From Harger Ultraweld

TESSCO is a proud distributor of Harger's Ultraweld exothermic product line. The Ultraweld process is a durable and safe method of welding copper-to-copper or copper-to-steel for the purpose of producing permanent electrical connections. Be sure you have the right mold in the field; download the pocket-sized Harger Ultraweld Field Catalog today! (PDF, 1.25 MB)

Grounding the Coax

Ground Kits

There are three standard connections within a grounding system. The first is the connection between the ground kit and the coaxial cable. It is very important to create a continuous bond between the outer copper conductor of the coax and the sleeve of the ground kit, so the proper-sized kit is essential.  Once the ground kit has been wrapped around the coax, the kit’s copper lead is then cut to length to create the straightest line to the ground bar.  Bends in the ground kits may allow the charge of the lightning strike to jump off and continue down the coax.  Place you ground kits on every piece of coax both near the antenna connection and before the coax enters the equipment shelter.

Surge Suppression.

The most important part of grounding any site is placing a surge suppressor or lightning protector on the coax right after the coax enters the shelter. As the grounding kit takes surge energy off the coax’s outer conductor, the surge arrestor takes energy off the center conductor. Surge suppressors are installed between the connections of two cables (i.e. between a jumper and a coax run) and come in a variety of types to fit RF connectors. Surge Suppressors are rated for specific frequency ranges and will block and then dissipate an RF signal outside of those ranges. However, not all energy can be blocked because the pulse reaches the suppressor at different times and gets through before the differential voltage can be equalize. The energy that gets through the suppressor is called the Throughput Energy. The goal is to pick the model with the lowest throughput for your desired frequency range and power level.

Lightning protectors can be either flange or bulkhead mounted.  While flange style can be mounted to a ground bar or single-point ground panel in certain applications, but bulkhead mounting is the recommended mounting method.

Broadband Surge/Lightning Protection & Grounding

There really isn’t an industry standard regarding lightning protection & grounding for wireless broadband equipment.  Some vendors have built in protection while others do not. Equipment installers should ensure that both POE & coaxial cables are both properly grounded. The most commonly used arrestors are: 

• Coaxial (both dc pass & block): Polyphaser Corporation's DSXL (700 MHz to 2.7 GHz) & the LSXL 4.2 to 6.0 GHz) are extremely popular. 
•  Power over Ethernet (POE) and Data Arrestors: Polyphaser Corporation makes an ISX series arrestor and in addition to factor-configured options, TESSCO also stocks a few common configurations such as Transtector's ALPU series.

New Products Developed to Deter Theft

Theft Deterrent
Ground Bar System

The Theft Deterrent Ground Bar features several innovative features, making it harder to steal, and less valuable to a potential thief. It looks different from any other ground bar on the market.

Harder to Steal:

Designed to mount vertically to the most secure part of your communications site. This kit includes tamper resistant screws and an attachment bracket designed to bond exothermically to either a flat plate or a horizontal post that is 2 OD”-4 OD”. Re-usable molds are available for either application.

Less Valuable to a Thief:

The bar is made from a ¼” X 4” x 23” tin-plated copper plate. It has 58 3/8” holes punched out of it. The words “STOLEN DO NOT RECYCLE” are stamped into the face of the bar. Because of its slim profile and since so much copper has been punched out of it, the actual copper content of the bar has been reduced to just under 4 lbs. Having the bar tin plated requires that a would-be recycler process the copper in a smelter to separate the tin from the copper, giving it an even lower scrap value.

Featured Solution

Ground Testing

Soil resistivity directly relates to soil type, moisture content and temperature and therefore the resistance of any grounding system will vary throughout the different seasons of the year. The best results are obtained if the ground rod reaches the water table. In light industrial or in telecommunication central offices, 5O is often the accepted value. For lightning protection, the arrestors should be coupled with a maximum ground resistance of 1O.

Why do I Test my Ground System?

How do I test My Ground System?

Who purchases a Ground Tester?

For more information contact TESSCO
at 800-472-7373 or email us today.

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