OPA-1090AS Masthead Preamplifier 1090 MHz + Bias Tee

jetvision® OPA-1090AS is a mast mounted preamplifier specifically designed for use with ADS-B and Mode-S. It can be used for all systems using 1090 MHz, such as Radarcape, Air!Squitter XGPS, other ADS-B receivers, transponder receivers, virtual radar systems or other comparable reception systems.

The mast preamplifier OPA-1090AS increases the reception range of these systems and essentially compensates losses in the cable to the actual receiver. jetvision® OPA-1090AS can be used with any passive antenna like our OPA-5 or similar products from other vendors.

1) Due to a special design the OPA-1090AS does not require an extra cable for the supply voltage. Supply voltage can be fed via the coaxial cable instead. There is no need for an extra power cable. The wide supply voltage is 5 V-14 V and can be taken from any USB port or USB power supply/charger and put onto the coax using our optionally supplied bias tee. The OPA-1090AS therefore usually does not require its own power supply unit and saves power and space in the overall system, but anyway other supply options are possible.

Thanks to the integrated bandpass filter with low insertion loss and a careful design, unwanted or even interfering signals from other trans¬missions such as GSM stations, LTE, WiFi, radio and TV transmitters are filtered immediately after the antenna. So they do not load the input of the downstream receiver. With this and the deliberately chosen, moderate gain of typically 16dB, the dynamic range of the receiver does not become restricted due to overloading. The mast preamplifier can only work efficiently when mounted as close as possible to the antenna, not at the other end of a potentially long and lossy cable. If the preamp is used at the end of the cable it will still amplify the signal but also the noise added by the cable. This leads to a worse signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and thus to less effective decoding of signals. Another advantage of using the preamp directly on the antenna is that you can use a cheaper cable with higher attenuation. The attenuation of the cable between the OPA-1090AS and the receiver can be up to 20 dB.

Therefore, and especially to be mounted outside and on top of the mast, the OPA-1090AS comes with a rain and weather protected case, rain protected N-female connectors on the bottom side which itself are waterproof.