Espen Koht wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

This is a curious question, which I don't believe has been asked before,
and to which I couldn't actually find and answer. And only being half
asleep and thinking about one thing whilst reading the paper idly,
caused three things to slip into my mind together.

Namely 'rural broadband' the influence of the environment on
transmission speed and quality, and the fact that here, high up in west
suffolk, and hence potentially a target for windmills, we already have
half a dozen radio towers dotted with aerials and dishes.

So, how do presumably metal or carbon fibre blades thwacking past or
around a microwave tower affect its transmission and reception?

Nearly all mobile phone masts are fed via microwave. A HUGE amount of
data backbones are built out of them - a lot cheaper than fibre. And
although the towers occupy in general the highest ground around,
windmills reach even higher. They would inevitably be in many line of
sight beams' paths..

I don't get this view of wind turbines as being having some kind of
'special' powers to affect the environment; they are just structures.
Where microwaves are being used for point-to-point communication you
just do what you would do in an urban environment or in mountainous
regions: find a line of sight or create one by putting up a mast. These
a fixed structures and are not going to come waltzing in to view
unexpectedly. You figure out where they are and find a line-of-sight
accordingly. If your existing line-of-sight gets disrupted you move,
build higher or build another repeater to get around it. Not
rocket-science.

Espen: the key here is the blades MOVE. And they are high up in
otherwise clear space.

We are quite smart in dealing with multipath from fixed objects..we are
far less so when the object moves.

Like wise doppler radar - the easiest way to pick low flying aircraft
out of ground clutter - can't cope with stuff moving at low level.