Grounding of utility poles equipped with radio equipment

[tiba2013]

We are installing 50’ poles on with dedicated antennas & associated radio equipment will be mounted. I would like to see if there is anything with regards to grounding that we should be looking at or if the single pole ground rod would be sufficient.

 

[MKFPE]

Hi,

Depends on the lightning activity at your location and how important the radio is.

An excellent reference for grounding design is the Motorola "Standards and Guidelines for Communications Sites" Publication R56.

Recommendations are given depending on how you classify the installation in terms of importance and reliability.

Document is easily found via Google search.

Regards,

 

[tiba2013]

Thanks MKFPE for the tip!

 

[JohnMcNutt]

Most important is that you bond all metal objects with heavy gauge wire so that if anything gets hit by lightning, potential of all objects rises and falls the same and the electronics will not see any difference. Lots of ground paths always exist through important and expensive equipment so the job of the bonding is to provide lower resistance ground paths so current does not flow on the former.