[SOLVED] powerful Internal antenna for LTE Router

[MEfiX95]

Hi all, I've purchased a 500GB/month 4G Data plan with one of my local telecommunications providers in Australia (Optus) and was provided with a Huawei B525 router (which I assume is decent enough for what I require). I've been mulling over purchasing a powerful antenna that can be perform adequately indoors, either in the attic or beside the window. I have 3 towers located approximately 1KM away from me and this can get frustrating as my device tends to change towers frequently in search of the best signal. I'm not in search of maximum potential, just a sizable increase to my available bandwidth if at all possible (looking for 50/20 ideally). In ideal conditions, during low humidity and clear weather during midday I get around 20-39mbps down, 15 up and around 16-25 latency. At night it drops down to 8-14 as more people come home and clog up the CVC. I went with my particular plan as I was told there would be no throttling involved aside from the aforementioned CVC bottlenecking. I have taken my router with me to a suburb in the inner city where I have access to higher frequency bands and the speeds are 80/25 and 140/50 on and off-peak respectively so I do believe it may be possible to achieve better results if I improve my signal at home. I would like to know if anyone can recommend a good directional antenna that would perform decently from inside a home with only a window in the way. I could also attach one outside for optimal positioning but obviously having it indoors would be easier and more preferable for me as I have little time nowadays to install it. Also, since many people responding to this post probably won't be from Australia and many solid recommendations won't be available here, what specifics should I be aware of when purchasing an LTE antenna? Should I go with a dual-band set-up? If so, should I opt for a yagi antenna? Or are there less ostentatious devices out there that may be more suitable for this particular situation. Many thanks in advance.

 

[bill001g]

Your first project is to find the frequencies the ISP uses on the towers you are using. You need to get antenna for those frequencies. There are antenna that support large range called "log" something I forget. Yagi tuned to the frequency you need will be better.

In most cases to LTE uses mimo. You need 2 antenna 90 degrees to take advanage of this. They make special antenna with 2 antenna mounted in the same. Flat panel is more common but there are yagi.

You will likely need special adapters to hook it to the router. From what I can tell that router has the ability to connect broadband antenna it is not on all equipment.

Now I don't know about your country but antenna in the USA are in the grey area of being legal. Technically you can use them but you must have approval from the ISP to use them. They are still responsible for any interference. So even though many ISP have policies that say you can request approval most do not want to deal with you so they will never send you the paperwork you need to legally do it. Then again the laws are not enforced unless you actually cause interference with the cell towers.

 

[MEfiX95]

Your first project is to find the frequencies the ISP uses on the towers you are using. You need to get antenna for those frequencies. There are antenna that support large range called "log" something I forget. Yagi tuned to the frequency you need will be better.

In most cases to LTE uses mimo. You need 2 antenna 90 degrees to take advanage of this. They make special antenna with 2 antenna mounted in the same. Flat panel is more common but there are yagi.

You will likely need special adapters to hook it to the router. From what I can tell that router has the ability to connect broadband antenna it is not on all equipment.

Now I don't know about your country but antenna in the USA are in the grey area of being legal. Technically you can use them but you must have approval from the ISP to use them. They are still responsible for any interference. So even though many ISP have policies that say you can request approval most do not want to deal with you so they will never send you the paperwork you need to legally do it. Then again the laws are not enforced unless you actually cause interference with the cell towers.

Hey Bill, thanks for stopping buy. After more careful inspection I've found it is also illegal to possess a signal booster in Australia. I saw them being advertised on reputable websites and assumed they were legal but I do not want to risk being fined over $300,000 because my country can't seem to manage an adequate national mobile network. Damn shame but thanks for your help.