Hi,
How much benefit I can expect from utilizing MiMo on 5g?
Soon I am going to install MAX HD2 MBX 5G to 30m yacht. Boat is already equipped with 2 cellular antennas with LMR400 cabels. Plan is to replace 2 old antennas with SCNN UHF5G antennas. So at the moment I have only 2 antennas for 2 modems.
Boat is located in Croatia and it will be traveling in Adriatic sea using T-mobile (hrvatski telekom) SIMs.
T-mobile in Croatia is using 2100MHz band and it is sharing it with LTE wia DSS. Installing additional antennas and routing cables is no small job but if there is good reason we will do it.
I last 5 years I installed a lot of Pepling LTE routers and tested LTE MiMo several times and never sea any benefit, so I come to conclusion that providers in Croatia don’t use mimo.
Of course when I receive 5G router I will test it before installing it on yacht but I am still curious what you thing.
4G can work without Mimo using a single antenna but It would be a crazy waste to not have all antenna elements connected in my opinion however I fully understand how hard it is to run so many antenna cables.
Depending on your vessel construction you might find the included stick antennas will provide enough signal to be useful. If you look at what speeds you can get on your phone when in the same location the HD2 MBX will be installed - that’s a good guide as to what you’ll get using just the stick antennas.
Although less useful at sea where you’re only likely to find a single low frequency carrier available from a provider - mimo antenna paths and carrier aggregation can mean the difference between unusable congested connectivity and hundreds of Mbps when inshore or tied up at a marina.
Understood.
Can I get away with using only 2 antennas for one modem instead of using 4?
In current situation i am thinking of using 2 external antennas for one modem and internal stick antennas for other one.
Hello @luka.madunic,
We have vessels & building that only have four (4) external antennas yet use the MBX HD4 Cat18, which is 16 antenna connections. We supply RF solutions to commercial land and marine customers designed for these situations. This is more than just an RF splitter; though the solution costs a lot, it is comparable to running the additional cables, installing additional antennas and the time involved.
You may also like to contact your local Peplink Partner; they have access to a detailed Antenna Selection Guide within their Partner Section of the Peplink Forum; the details within this are just as relevant for 5G.
Happy to Help,
Marcus
I have a 68’ sail boat with 4 antenna with lmr 400 on top of the 2 masts i cant get any more wire in the masts already using pepwave 5 in one antenna dome on each mast
what is the solution for only using 4 antenna with cat 18…?
Hello Scott @smsscott,
The design is complex and customised for each client; the solutions and designs are not published. We need to know the specific model of antennas, the brand of cable used (more so than the type), connections use, lightning protection already installed, and other things just to get started.
The solutions can easily equate to more than half the cost of the Pepwave router. We have seen cheaper options out there, though you get what you pay for from what we’ve seen. We focus on reliable & premium solutions.
FYI our team is based in Australia. We do export our solutions internationally if there is no one locally able to supply these solutions.
Have you reached out to your local Peplink Partner? The Regional Distributor will have or know a partner experienced in complex RF solutions if you’d like someone locally to work with you.
