Looking for a little antenna help with the Max BR1 5G.
I have two Poynting LPDA antennas (Used these with my 4g setup) and also just purchased an 850mhz and 1700-2100mhz Yagi.
I am a half mile from the tower, my old 4g was ground mounted and I had a very strong signal, I would say average before was RSSI: -40dBm SINR:25dB RSRP:-50dBm RSRQ:-9dBm
I have a direct line of sight, and I am using Verizon network
I hooked up the four antennas I mentioned, but the signal degraded from everything above. The speed did increase from being on the 5G network instead of 4g. SINR is averaging around 8 dB for my 5g Signal
I am connecting mostly to band 5(850mhz) and band 77 (3700mhz) for 5G
My main question is to utilize the 4 antenna ports do the antennas for Port 1 and 2 (Also Port 3 and 4) need to match up frequencies? Setting an 850mhz yagi on port 3 and a 1700-2100 yagi on port 4 would not work? Also, does the order matter for plugging in the antennas?
Also, as far as the 4 antennas go… When I had 2 antennas, I had both mounted on the same pole, one at 0 degrees, and one at 90 degrees (Only about a foot apart because of the orientation difference). I am able to space the next to antennas over 6 feet away, would the optimal orientation for these be at -45 degrees, and 45 degrees. Or could these also be mounted at the 0 degrees and 90 degrees?
Finally, last question, thanks for reading this far… Would you expect any difference in the broadcast orientation of 4g vs 5g? What I mean is, with 4g ground mounted worked very well due to my close proximity to the tower, is the 5G signal going over my antenna at this point? Or is 4g and 5g broadcast direction similar?
I believe the best practice is to use an identical antenna attached to each of the 4 ports. Mixing different antennas across each port is not recommended.
Given your proximity to the tower the yagi is likely overkill. A panel style mimo directional would work fine. Something like this.
So antennas that don’t match the bands the local tower is using for 5G?
What bands was the LTE in, maybe the Yagis you have are more tuned for those channels than the 850/3700 you say you are getting 5G service from?
Yes, really and ideall they will need to cover the entire 5GHz band used by your carrier.
You shouldn’t need much separation between the elements, you could try one horizontal, one vertical and then one each slant 45 (i.e. 0˚ / 90˚ / +45˚ / -45˚).
That is going to be very specific to the tower and carrier in question and rather hard for people to answer.
This is sound advice too, there is such a thing as too much gain at close range and too much directionality, at that kind of distance you could probably get away with the stock dipoles and be just fine assuming the BR was not mounted in an overly shielded location! The panorama antenna linked there is decent, there is also a new Poynting 4x4 Mimo that is good and Taoglas and Peplink themselves all make very good 4x4 Mimo options if you wanted to try something else.
