Exploring Single Tube Towers: The New Favorite in the Communication Field

一、What is a single tube tower

    Single tube tower belongs to the field of tube tower technology and is a practical and innovative iron tower. It includes a tower body and an upper working platform. The bottom pipe wall of the tower body has a lower door opening, and the pipe wall where the working platform is located has an upper door opening. The antenna bracket is fixed on the fence and there is a ladder inside. Its structure is simple and reasonable, consisting of a climbing ladder main pole and a crossbar connected to the climbing ladder main pole. The climbing ladder main pole is fixedly connected to the support frame, and the support frame is screw connected to the connecting bracket set on the inner wall of the tower.

    The single tube tower has a beautiful appearance and occupies a small area of only 9-18 square meters. The tower body adopts reasonable segments and is connected by high-strength bolts through connectors, which is easy and fast to install and can adapt to various complex outdoor sites. The built-in ladder and wiring method not only provide a convenient and safe operating environment for operators, but also prevent the feeder from being exposed to sunlight and rain, greatly extending the service life of the feeder. Moreover, the center of gravity of the tower will not shift due to the installation of the feeder. The bottom of the tower is fixed with double-layer nuts, which can fine tune the verticality of the tower and more effectively ensure installation accuracy.

    The single tube tower has a simple shape, just like a thick steel pipe being vertically erected. It has many advantages, such as fast construction, convenient relocation and reuse, and is widely applicable in urban areas, residential communities, universities, commercial districts, scenic spots, industrial parks, railway lines and other areas. But there are also some drawbacks, such as high cost, difficult installation, difficult handling, difficult production, etc.

    The ground part of a single tube tower is collectively referred to as the single tube tower foundation, which is used to stabilize the single tube tower and prevent it from being pulled up, down, or overturned under vertical loads such as strong winds, icing, and other external forces.

    The single tube tower type in communication base stations has a small volume and few components. It consists of main components such as tower body, tower base, antenna bracket, lightning rod, and anchor bolt, as well as auxiliary components such as beautification cover and climbing bolt. Each component can be regarded as a module. Tower foundations often use single pile foundations, and when encountering soft soil foundations, multi pile cap foundations are used. For some complex geological conditions, independent foundations may be used. Anchor bolts are usually used in conjunction with positioning plates, and the cross-sectional form of the tower body is generally circular and regular polygonal. A few beautified towers use irregular cross-sections. The main pole of the lightning rod is a circular tube with a length of 3m or 5m, connected to the tower body with a flange at the bottom and a free tip at the top. Communication single tube towers usually have 2-3 layers of antenna support platforms, each layer of antenna support consisting of 3 or 6 ∅ 74 round steel pipes. The steel pipes are connected to the tower body using groove steel rings to form the antenna platform.

    After the creation of component families for each part of the single tube tower, they can be added to the component library as templates for component assembly in new projects. First, establish a coordinate grid. The single tube tower has a simple form, and only one single line axis needs to be established vertically as the central axis of the single tube tower. Set elevation lines at the bottom of each joint section, which also serve as reference lines for the joint position. Then extract component template families such as tower body, tower base, lightning rod, antenna bracket, and anchor bolts from the component library and load them into the newly built Revit project. Assemble them from bottom to top in height.

二、Characteristics of single tube tower

1. Multiple advantages of single tube tower

    The single tube tower has a simple and beautiful appearance, good vertical height adjustability, and a better rod shape coefficient than other shapes. The feeder runs internally, avoiding the influence of external environment and greatly improving the service life of the feeder. The maintenance safety factor of the internal climbing ladder is high, the ventilation inside the pipe is good, the flange connection makes the tower body stable, and the installation is also very convenient.

2. Limitations of single tube tower

    Although single tube towers have many advantages, they also have some shortcomings. It is simple, beautiful, occupies a small area, has fast construction and installation speed, and is suitable for various scenarios with lifting equipment operation conditions. However, the single tube tower is a long cantilever structure with poor wind resistance and large displacement at the top of the pole. At the same time, there are limitations on on-site construction conditions, and the cost is relatively high compared to traditional iron towers. Installing antennas and maintaining them is relatively difficult.

三、Advantages of single tube tower

    Single tube towers have many significant advantages. Firstly, it has a simple and beautiful body shape, like lifting a thick steel pipe vertically, giving people a simple and atmospheric visual experience. It occupies a small area of only 9-18 square meters, which is particularly prominent in the increasingly scarce urban land resources. Fast construction speed can effectively shorten the construction period and improve project efficiency. Relocation and reuse are also very convenient, and can be flexibly adjusted according to actual needs, reducing costs. The application scenarios are wide, including urban areas, residential communities, universities, commercial districts, scenic spots, industrial parks, railway lines and other areas. Whether in bustling cities or peaceful rural areas, the figure of single tube towers can be found.

    Compared with angle steel towers and three tube towers, single tube towers have significant advantages in terms of aesthetics and footprint. The angle steel tower has a large body shape, occupies a large area, and has poor aesthetics; Although the three tube tower is slimmer than the angle steel tower, it still lags behind the single tube tower in terms of aesthetics and footprint. The simple appearance of a single tube tower allows it to better integrate into the surrounding environment and does not exert enormous pressure like an angle steel tower.

    However, single tube towers also have some drawbacks, such as high cost, difficult installation, difficult handling, and difficult production. Due to its large components, high handling costs, and high installation requirements, it requires large equipment such as cranes. At the same time, there are many welds, making quality control difficult, leading to increased production difficulty. However, despite this, the advantages of single tube towers are still prominent, and their applications in the field of communication are becoming increasingly widespread.

四、Application fields of single tube tower

1. Widely used in the field of communication, it can be applied to urban areas, residential communities, universities, commercial districts, scenic spots, industrial parks, railway lines and other areas.

    Single tube towers are widely used in the field of communication due to their advantages of simple and beautiful shape, small footprint, fast construction, and convenient relocation and reuse. In urban areas, single tube towers can integrate with surrounding modern buildings without appearing abrupt, providing stable support for the city's communication network. In residential areas, the presence of single tube towers ensures the communication needs of residents, allowing them to stay in touch anytime and anywhere. As an important place for knowledge and information dissemination, the deployment of single tube towers in universities ensures smooth communication on campus, providing convenience for the learning and life of teachers and students. The prosperity of commercial areas cannot be separated from efficient communication networks, and single tube towers play an important role here, meeting the communication needs of businesses and consumers. Within the scenic area, the single tube tower provides excellent communication services for tourists without damaging the natural landscape, facilitating the sharing of beautiful scenery and maintaining contact with the outside world. The communication needs of industrial parks cannot be ignored, and the application of single tube towers enables enterprises to efficiently carry out production and management. Along the railway line, single tube towers ensure communication safety during train operation and provide convenient communication services for passengers.

2. As a special type of single tube tower, landscape towers such as streetlight poles and biomimetic trees not only retain communication functions but also seamlessly integrate with the surrounding environment, making them suitable for places that require landscape beautification.

    Landscape tower is a special form of single tube tower, which not only meets the communication function, but also pays more attention to the integration with the surrounding environment. Landscape towers in the form of streetlight poles are widely used on both sides of municipal roads, scenic spots, parks, squares, and other places. The cross-section of the tower body is circular, and the shape can be flexibly set according to the application scenario and the requirements of the owner. At night, street lights not only provide illumination for pedestrians, but also conceal communication base stations, achieving multifunctional integration. The biomimetic tree landscape tower plays a unique role in scenic spots, parks, squares, and other places. From a distance, it looks like a tall and verdant tree, with plate-like antennas hidden inside its leaves. It does not affect the natural landscape and provides stable communication services. The emergence of these landscape towers has made communication facilities no longer abrupt, but integrated with the surrounding environment, bringing people a better visual enjoyment.