The information can be voice, data, or video as long as it is in a digital format. The combination of these three components is referred to as a radio terminal. Two terminals are required to establish a microwave communications link, commonly referred to as a microwave hop. The non-protected configuration is a single standalone terminal. One very important characteristic of digital microwave radio transmission is its immunity to noise.
Noise refers to unwanted electromagnetic waveforms which corrupt a message signal.
Noise is inevitable in electrical communications systems. Microwave radio offers several advantages over cable-based transmission. Microwave radio is simpler, faster, more feasible and more flexible to implement than cable systems. Microwave is also easy to move if there is a change in a network. In order to turn up their networks, cellular carriers need to connect their cell sites to switching stations.