Wireless RF & Microwave Design

TCS Consultants, Inc. provides wireless consultation services specializing in microwave design and 2-way coverage prediction. TCS has been performing these services for over 30 years and assists manufacturers, suppliers, cellular, energy & gas, government, and military entities in getting the most out of their resources and budgets.

Established in 1984 under the name Technical Communications Software and then in 1995 under TCS Consultants, Inc. - TCS has been performing these services for more than three decades.

TCS has been performing microwave feasibility studies, physical path surveys, optimization design, licensing, and implementation for as long as it's been in business. Using state-of-the-art equipment, software, and automated web-service interconnects - TCS can quickly and accurately design single hop internet interconnects to cross country, multiple OC3 long-haul microwave systems. Using integrated custom design software and databases developed in-house — including Spanline, TCS Consultants' browser-based microwave path design and Pathloss .pl5 engineering platform — TCS provides faster turn-around, more accurate results, at less cost to its customers.

TCS provides radio frequency coverage prediction analysis as one of it's primary services. Providing reliable and accurate coverage prediction from decades of experience in the 2-way and telemetry industry. TCS has a proven track-record of providing both measurable success in coverage prediction and quick response in providing these services and products to our customers. Typical results are completed and delivered in 1 business day via electronic delivery.

From creating brochures, bids, or presentations to preliminary feasibility studies of proposed 2-way or telemetry system to analyzing potential anomalies in existing systems - TCS provides these services with quick and professional turn-around.

Spanline (Launch App) is TCS Consultants' free, full-featured browser-based microwave path design and link engineering software platform:

• Pathloss 5 (.pl5) & Radio (.rsd) Compatibility: Bidirectional Pathloss 5 (.pl5) file import and export plus .rsd radio specification file import.
• Automated High-Resolution Terrain & Clutter: Builds path profiles from USGS 3DEP bare-earth terrain plus 3DEP LiDAR Height Above Ground (HAG), LANDFIRE vegetation canopy height, OpenStreetMap 3D buildings, and Annual NLCD clutter classes.
• ITU-R & North American Propagation Models: Full link-budget and availability engineering using Vigants–Barnett and ITU-R P.530 multipath availability, Crane and ITU-R P.837/P.838 rain attenuation, ITU-R P.1510 annual temperature, ITU-R P.676 atmospheric absorption, and ITU-R P.526 diffraction.
• 77-Item Pre-Loaded Equipment Catalog & Custom Import: Pre-loaded multi-vendor radio, antenna, and transmission line catalogs (Nokia/Wavence, Aviat Networks, Ceragon, Cambium, CommScope/Andrew, RFS, and Times Microwave, plus any vendor via Pathloss .rsd import or custom catalog entry) with 10-mode Adaptive Coding & Modulation (ACM) and ATPC.
• FCC ASR Lookup & Engineering Exports: Integrated FCC Antenna Structure Registration (ASR) tower search, Fresnel zone clearance and reflection/grazing analysis, and one-click export to Pathloss-style Word (.rtf), printable PDF Path Survey Reports, and Google Earth (.kml).

Explore Spanline documentation & overview or launch the Spanline web application directly in your browser.

TCS Consultants, Inc. has been performing wireless consultation services for over 30 years. Starting as technical communications software developers, (TCS), created some of the first available wireless design software in the industry. This included microwave path design, height above average terrain, USGS map-cross software (before there were digital maps available), a 1st to 5th order inter-modulation calculator, and mobile coverage analysis used for VHF, UHF, conventional and trunked radio systems, and SCADA / Telemetry applications.

In the late 80s, TCS Consultants, Inc. moved from designing software to actually performing the services that our software provided. TCS was being contracted to provide a number of wireless services but specialized in microwave path surveys, FCC licensing assistance, training, and providing radio coverage prediction for 2-way systems and telemetry.

From the 1990s through 2008, TCS expanded into wireless system consulting using CTE's Pathloss software as well as installing and maintaining microwave, 2-way radio, structures, lighting, telemetry, and associated antenna and hardware systems. Throughout that period, TCS's software engineers continued building custom engineering platforms, digital report automation, and interconnected RF databases.

Today, TCS Consultants, Inc. operates as an independent RF and microwave consulting engineering firm (without physical tower installation crews) and has brought its decades of software and field engineering heritage to the modern web with Spanline, our browser-based microwave path design and Pathloss .pl5 engineering platform.

TCS Consultants, Inc. prides itself on providing the fastest service possible while maintaining the highest standards of accuracy and precision. This is done through decades of research into state-of-the-art equipment, building on our rich foundation of custom in-house developed software, and adapting new technologies, resources and time-reducing advancements to our design and implementations procedures.