State-of-the-art commercial LOS radio used on long over-water path in military LOS network

State-of-the-art commercial microwave line-of-sight (LOS) radios were used to quickly serve a difficult link of a military microwave LOS system called the Digital European Backbone (DEB). The authors describe what is likely the most sophisticated LOS terminal configuration in use today. The link is a 55-mile over-water path across the English Channel. The system uses quad-space and dual-frequency diversity, as well as slope equalization at intermediate frequency and transversal equalization at baseband. The complicated design was necessitated by (1) a difficult path prone to ducting and other anomalous propagation, (2) large waveguide losses due to tall towers, and (3) inability to test the full two-frequency configuration prior to cutover to live traffic