This forum is for discussions regarding System Infrastructure and Related Equipment. This includes but is not limited to repeaters, base stations, consoles, voters, Voice over IP, system design and implementation, and other related topics.
If so, what are models or remote recievers? I am unable to find anythign anywhere, and everythign I read always states "...from the remote reciever..."
A remote receiver is any receiver. So, your drawing could be -
rcvr in Quantar programmed as base ==> backhaul ==> comparator (voter) ==> backhaul ==> xmit in same Quantar
Motorola did make a receive only version of all their stations so you could place a rcvr where you didn't necessarily need a transmitter. The rx only Micor was much smaller than the base / rptr. The Quantar rcvr was about a third the size of the base. The MTR came in the same form factor minus a functioning transmitter - it was just an empty casting.
The key thing about analog (signal to noise) voting is the receive audio response curve. You want all the receivers to sound about the same so that the voter can accurately select the best quality. When you mix several models of receivers in a system, you can get unexpected results. The comparator may favor a particular receiver that has less high frequency noise content than all the rest though it may not have the best quieted signal. Conversely, it may never select a particular receiver because there is a constant residual hiss forcing the comparator to not consider it. Your choice in backhaul can also cause this problem if one link cuts the high freq content more than the others, or it imparts a hiss (comfort noise). Part of the system setup is to generate a common signal that all sites can receive so you can set the line levels and audio equalization the same for each inbound signal.
In a digital system, the basic architecture is the same (rx - backhaul - comp - backhaul - tx), but the comparator works on it at the bit level. You have to have a synchronized network so all the bits arrive at the same time, and then the first byte that is recovered without error is used. All the rest go into the bit bucket. There is no real rcvr select going on - just unerrored bytes. So, you do not see voter activity like you do on an analog voter. You just see a link active indicator between the comparator and the receiver(s). Levels and equalization don't matter because it is a low speed data link.
