Balance 20x Cat 18 antenna ports purpose - intended Implementation?

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
1

Balance 20x with an expansion plug in card with a Cat 18 single Modem,…Its single correct?
There are two 2x2 antenna ports on the expansion card (Main/AuxA and Main/AuxB).

Is that a single 2x2 for each of two sims one for each carrier? (and if you only use one sim from one carrier the B antenna Mimo port pair is not needed and does nothing at all).

OR

Is that a choice of a 2x2 or a 4x4 Mimo Antenna? (and with a single carrier with a single sim, assuming the antennas are spaced and oriented correctly) you will get better single carrier multiple band aggregation and thus more reliable, less weather fading and/or higher performance faster transfer Rate?

If the later, can I assume two Poyntiing 2x2 5G 2x2 Mimo antennas each with its own same length pair of cables where the two antenna are mounted on the same mast three feet apart vertically where one of those two directional antennas is rotated 45 degrees will give me better results in a reasonable to marginal signal location as compared to only one of those antennas?

Application is a failover for FIOS.

Any opinion appreciated on the later. Any fact on the first question really really appreciated :slight_smile:

2

The Flex module mini for the Balance 20x (EXM-MINI-1GLTE-G) has a single CAT18 modem with dual SIM (for cold failover between providers).

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So you would typically use an antenna with 4 lte elements like the Puma PUMA-401-S-B-6.

You could of course use a pair of 2x2 Mimo antennas instead if you like.

Don’t both rotating - no need. Add some vertical separation and that will do.

3

Thank you Martin Langmaid. I was totally unsure if the second 2x2 was to support a second carrier sim. So Far Verizon and ATT signal strength is not acceptable here so T-Mobile is the only carrier giving me enough to even do this. So one sim. Thanks again

1 Like
4

You can run a second active carrier sim in the Cat4 modem built into the B20X.

This would require another 2x2 antenna.

5

Yeah I understand. I was just selecting between transit version and balance 20x and selecting between plug in to balance 20x of the cat 12 and the cat 18. I already (based on signal strength (go t-mobile) that I can get 10% of my fios download speed when fios fails. Fios= 300 up and down. To me the questions are, for T-Mobile only, does going to Cat 18 and getting band 71 going to actually matter based on the actual cell towers around me (does not look promising) in which case the cat 12 with 2x2 Mimo was perfect. If the cat 18 gave me better coverage based on the two sets on Mimo 2x2 antennas, and if I only used one sim, and it was only T-Mobile as the sim carrier, then it would just be a matter of a second antenna and the extra downlink cables and a small licensing change and the performance would be better for me.