Hi,
I have a 310 5g on order and want to buy an external antenna to use with it and I’d appreciate some suggestions. Is there a single antenna that can utilise the full capability of the 2 cellular modems? My use case is as follows:
The 310 5g will be used at various outdoor events in the UK for a few days at a time, I will mount the antenna up high, potentially on a 21’ scaffold pole so will need the leads to be long enough, or will use extension leads. Sometimes the event will be rural with weak cellular signals and at other times urban with strong signals. The are only 4 cellular operators here so can load the 310 with 4 sims and pick the best 2, right?
The bands currently used here are:
- 800MHz (Band 20)
- 900MHz (Band 8)
- 1400MHz SDL (Band 32)
- 1800MHz (Band 3)
- 2100MHz (Band 1)
- 2300MHz (Band 40)
- 2600MHz FDD (Band 7)
- 2600MHz TDD (Band 38)
- 3400MHz (Band 42)
Source: 4G and 5G frequency bands in the UK
Thanks for any help!
Jay.
You have to decide if you want omni directional or directional. If directional, each time you’d have to locate the cell tower and aim the antenna at it.
Also, you might now have to consider lightning protection if you are going to mount an antenna up on a mast.
Look up the different MHz and DB loss per foot for the wire you plan to use.
When you are in the urban areas having omni-directional antennas and keeping the cable length short is your best option. If you have some sort of rack-mount for your router you could just mount the omni-antennas to the top of that rack and call it done.
For the rural scenario directional antenna will likely perform better. Since you have one modem that requires 2x mimo antenna and the other 4x mimo antenna you might have different antenna make & model for each. You may only need a directional antenna for one of the modems whereas the other cell modem can connect to closer towers.
I’d start with just omni-antennas since you’d want that either way.
For the question about sim card best 2…there isnt anything built-in that measures and then selects the “best sim” in terms of bandwidth/latency. You have to do that yourself. However running speedtest a few times, looking at the signal numbers and toggling the sims back and forth isnt difficult, you need to plan 15min into your setup time to allow for the sim cards switching from A-to-B (can take 2-3min).
Thanks for the comments.
Selecting the antennas is harder than choosing the router!
I think I will start off with omni-directional, it’s a shame that the peplink antennas only come with 2m leads. The Peplink Maritime antennas look great but are expensive so maybe could be future purchases.
Will probable go with a Peplink Mobility 40G for the 5g and Poynting for the LTE modem, model to be decided.
Now I’m thinking about the Poynting Puck 2 antennas, for less than the cost of one Peplink 40G, I can buy 3 Puck 2s which should work, right? The performance seems to be close but maybe slightly behind the 40G.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
thanks.
Puck2 has negative gain in the low frequency bands. It wont perform well with those bands.
I am using Panorama Antennas. I have 2x of these on my campervan and they work great! They also have a 2x2 version. These have better specs than the Puck2
I decided to go with 3 x Panorama BSM-6-60-5SP antennas, think I got a decent deal directly from Panorama @ £110 + VAT each.