4G antenna.

I'm needing some advice about installing an antenna for a mobile broadband router.

Are all antennas much the same, there seems to be quite a range of prices.
Would I be sacrificing some performance by choosing an omni-directional antenna?
Could I mount it on the same pole as the TV aerial and run the cable down alongside the coaxial cable or would they interfere with each other?
Also, it would require at least 15 metres of cable, would the be too long/too much loss along this legnth?

Thank you, thank you, thank you if you can help me with some or all of this!

Tom Bola.

We use the 4G-XPOL-A0001 antenna from Solwise. It is omni-directional, with 5m of cable (which eats some of the gain, of course). We use it attached to a mobile MiFi device, rather than at home - though it gets used as emergency backup there too.

We find that, even when it is fixed to the outside of a window, it gives better reception than when the modem is sat on the inside of the same window. Often, of course, we can site the antenna better than we could the modem, so get very much better reception.

Solwise have this helpful info:
http://www.solwise.co.uk/4g-lte-antenna-consideratio...
and a selection of other antenna, including directional ones, and could, for example, even use two yagi antenna for MIMO use.

This Australian site gives you an idea about how extreme you could go for a high-gain, directional, MIMO setup:
http://onwireless.com.au/16dbi-4g-lte-1800mhz-mimo-x...

I'm pretty sure you could mount it on the same pole as the TV aerial, and run cable down to the modem. Technically it should work fine... but with 15m of cable, you might indeed be best with directional antenna and the best, lowest-loss cable you can find.

The Australian site has info on cable loss too:
http://onwireless.com.au/faq.html#which-coax-cable
Which shows applications for 4 different cable types.

Ironically, your biggest/strangest challenge might be planning permission: Without approval, you are limited to two microwave antenna on your property, which is defined as anything for 1,000MHz or above. Satellite dishes are considered as microwave antenna, as would be 4G antenna and WiFi antenna.

Thanks for the reply. Some good info there.

Make sure the aerial can take the weight. Mine couldn't, the aerial ended up going lopsided with a loss of broadband and tv signals.

Also when i moved mine to an aluminium pole that is attached to t&k brackets with a 15 metre cable run, i decided it looked better if i placed the cable inside the pole. It was also weather shielded.

Unfortunately i had to access the dish a year down the line. I was unable to just loosen the nuts and lower the pole because there was no slack in the cable. If the cable was cable tied to the outside of the pole, i could have just cut the cable tie and reattached another when tying it back to the pole.

With the cable inside the pole, i had two choices. Cut the cable or climb back onto the roof.
If you are confident you'll never need to get to the aerial, i would place the cable inside the pole, if you're not confident, i would do the outside.

My sim card is in the dish. I think a lot of the times now, the sim is in the router.
Anyway, that's some food for thought.

I would recommend the use of silicone grease on the nuts & bolts etc.; possibly with protective boots as well, in such circumstances.

Re: Poles, clamps, chimney-lashings, and co-ax cables: You can't beat this site for info. Just click on the appropriate blue link on the left-hand side column. Note, though, that there is nothing 4G (or any G...) - related on there.

If anyone was wondering, I'm nothing to do with that site, and have never bought from them. I'm just linking to their information regarding the things I mentioned in the opening sentence, which is excellent.

Edited by deleted (Thu 29-Sep-16 06:59:34)