A friend and I want to create a point to point connection across roughly 3.5 miles / 5.5 km. We have good LoS. Can HaLow do this? It seems like that distance might be a latt order, I think directional antennas might help, but would it be enough? What kind of equipment would we need?
For a link of 5.5 km and with clear LoS, I would reach for 802.11 WiFi, since the range of 802.11ah HaLow wouldn’t necessarily be needed. For reference, many WISPs use Ubiquiti 5 GHz point-to-point APs for their backhaul links for much further distances.
The question would be what your RF link conditions look like, whether 5 GHz is clear in your environment, and what sort of worst-case bandwidth you can accept. With a clear Fresnel zone, you could probably be pushing something like 50 Mbps symmetrical, if properly aimed and configured.
Ubiquiti’s website has a neat tool for roughly calculating terrain and RF losses.
I think the point of 11h is to achieve that kind of range without directional antennas. Basically as a higher-bandwidth version of LoRa.
And at significantly lower transmit power too. Ubiquiti 5ac ptp rigs use like 8w, 802.11ah can make a link with under a watt. Sure it won’t be fast at all but if you’re doing a remote embedded device on a solar panel, it makes a huge difference.