Improving MiFi in PVC from Huawei E5795 With 5G Ready Antenna

[Guigsy]

Ah, will have to do more research on what aerial connections do what on the RUTX50.

It's possible I'm wrong. It does seem odd that there's only one modem, but two sets of aerials.

 

[starquake]

It's possible I'm wrong. It does seem odd that there's only one modem, but two sets of aerials.

I dunno if Teltonika do this, but I've seen 4x mimo devices that only use 2 antenna feeds in real world (which sounds mad). The important thing is making sure you don't transmit as same time as you recieve as you can receive (as I think everyone who has studiesd radio knows) multiple freqencies simultaneously on a single antenna and ditto transmit multiple at same time. What you usually cannot do is transmit on a single antenna WHILST receiving. The trick is the router obviously receives all 4 frequencies it bonds on one antenna (all different) and transmits on the other in parallel. Now it isn't as good as 4 descrete antennas, but technically it does work.

Why else do you think we have TV transmitter towers with a single antenna to transmit multiple frequency bundles simultenously!

The thing that usually is done when you have 4 actual antennas is the gain for each band is different on each -> iphones as an example have a single antenna that is good at high frequency 5g bands, and the rest of its 3 antennas have near 0 gain on those bands. Ditto they have a single antenna optimised for higher frequency 4g, rest middling -> low. I've pasted the gain by each antenna diagram on here somewhere as an attachment (as in it's somewhere on motorhomefun, but I can't think which thread I put it in).

I'm more than happy to post here when I actually see a Three or EE sim regularly bonding 3 or 4 frequencies in non-city areas (I have quite a few deployed devices able to do this) on either 4G or 5G in rural areas, and probably will upgrade my own setup when I see that. But for moment a dual feed antenna works for us -> I'm of the opinon (and as said it is that) that 4 antennas are not required ina rural motorhome today. If you mainly stuck to city centres, it would be a different answer.

 

[Kannon Fodda]

I'm of the opinion (and as such it is such) that a 4 antenna solution on 5g doesn't add much Kannon Fodda
The logic and reasoning for this, is 4 antennas really only come into play on an iphone as an example when you NEXT to a 5g antenna, as many have poor gain (and thus don't travel well) on the higher frequencies. In fact an iphone antenna only has good gain on 5g frequencies on a SINGLE antenna. Thus 2 with "little" antenna for high gain and 2 on roof with good gain when close will do the job similar or better to an iphone when you NOT next to a tower. I suspect we will not see 5g in rural campsites for MANY years.

However you were right to focus on the LTE category and for remote wifi, a higher cat device as you've found will work far better. Equally ... hate to say it, but turning off 2.4ghz on your router (assuming it offers both 2.4 adn 5ghz) can also help as it stops the slower "clients" congesting. Max speed of 2.4 ghz wifi is for reference around 100Mbit when you have 2-3 clients on the network (yes, I know about 40mhz wifi before people complain, but I also know I only have ONE device capable of doing 300Mbit on 2.4ghz). You need to be using 5ghz, ideally on a second SSID, I think the Teltonica can be configured for that. Any device that "fails" to 2.4ghz will slow the network in effect (so entirely seperateing the 2 frequencies to seperate SSID's networks helps).

Worth noting however in one little small point, THree are rolling out coverage in a single frequency that many 5g chips can't use .. which is more than annoying. (Band 32 is it's name), 1500mhz, so lower frequency than normal band 3 which EE and Three use (1800mhz) for their bulk data. The annoying thing is many 5g devices can't access it, but your RUTX50 CAN (it's one of a very rare breed in this regard).
That was the frequency avaialble 20mhz wide (all of the EE/Three Band 3 is under this), at clubfest which was providing me service when everyone with a cat4 device like your old one was claiming "no service". (It's worth noting this frequency only allows downlink traffic too, it cannot take a single uplink or upload packet). Equally Band 28 I think it is on 4g is also being rolled out by Three (700mhz) ,so goes further than 900mhz like the voda/o2 networks, and even the band 20 coverage EE and Three use). But importantly it's WIDER than the B20 coverage so more data per second.

So effectively as towers get the B28/32 upgrades you are in a great position to use them, and they won't even work on other devices.

The important thing with future upgrades (like B32) is most of them only work when bonded with an existing frequency for more capacity. This requires a Cat6 or higher device with 2 antennas connected. Thats the minimum. You X50 should be able to bond potentially 4 LTE streams together on some networks with 4 full antennas, and this may help in some rural campsites. I would add though I have only found a single campsite we have visited in last year where the diags have found over 3 frequencies to bond ... and that was Burton Constaple above Hull. However with my (2) anteenas on a cat12, it bonded only the 2 "fattest" and fastest frequencies, which is what I would have personally chosen if the device had that level of diagnostics. Those were B28/32 -> and we had > 80Mbit in a rural (busy) campsite on a bank holiday where everyone was watching the Leeds playoff game (given a lot of people from around Hull support or follow Leeds). If I had a cat 4 device it would only have seen the Band 20 coverage, which performed... at about 2Mbit.

So in a nutshell, keep my hands off the wallet and stick with the current roof aerial

Worth noting that at Thorpe-Le-Soken, Essex, earlier this month, whilst I had no 4G service on the Smarty with the old Huawei (and didn't have the RUTX50 at that point), my Samsung phone on Tesco (O2) was claiming a 5G service and I was happily using that for streaming. There was a big telecoms mast nearby on the Grange Farm campsite.

 

[Gellyneck]

I had strongly considered the MU5001, but eventually discounted it. There are confused, conflicting reviews over the internal that although it is Cat 22, for anything 4G it only uses it's own internal aerials, and the 2 external aerials only come into action on a 5G service.

Meant to mention on a very brief test of our ZTE MU5001 (ex Vodaphone) with a Poynting MIMO-0003-V2-12 it seemed to improve the signal on both 5g and 4g with a Smarty (3) sim but investigated no further.

 

[RowleyBirkinQC]

There are various questions/threads on the Teltonika forum regarding the RUTX50 and antenna ports/use, here are a few example links…

RUTX50 antenna port identification

Hi. Just purchased our first Teltonika product the RUTX50 and we are confused regarding the 4 mobile antenna ports which are all just labeled ‘Mobile’. We assumed - quite possibly wrongly - that the 4 ports were allocated 2 / SIM, but results from tests seem to indicate this isn’t the case...

community.teltonika.lt

Which cable to which connection? RUTX50

hello and good day, My external antenna has seven connection cables. The four mobile connections are marked: CELL1Main CELL1 AUX/DIV CELL2 MAIN CELL2 AUX/DIV Does it matter which of the four ports marked “MOBILE” is connected to which? Many thanks for your help

community.teltonika.lt

Teltonika Community

community.teltonika-networks.com

Teltonika Community

community.teltonika-networks.com

I think we have our CELL1/2 main antenna leads connected to the outside router antenna ports, then the aux leads on the the 2 inside router antenna ports (C1 main, C1 aux, C2 aux, C2 main) as a result of stumbling across such a thread. No idea if correct though.

The RUT50X and Poynting antenna has transformed the value of the Smarty (3) sim for us compared with our old Huawei mifi and puck antenna, but with an IQ Mobile ‘Go’ (EE) sim for on demand backup if/where required.

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[starquake]

So in a nutshell, keep my hands off the wallet and stick with the current roof aerial

Worth noting that at Thorpe-Le-Soken, Essex, earlier this month, whilst I had no 4G service on the Smarty with the old Huawei (and didn't have the RUTX50 at that point), my Samsung phone on Tesco (O2) was claiming a 5G service and I was happily using that for streaming. There was a big telecoms mast nearby on the Grange Farm campsite.

Yes exactly, I wouldn't upgrade antenna until it's a commonplace thing to bind 4 antennas.

O2 are rolling out 5g rapidly, as they have a technical& commecial need to do so (they have the least 4g capacity of ALL of the networks). As such they do get congested faster today, so need to upgrade to stop their customers moving to faster networks. . They have also just updated the tower at a site in East Yorks I have a lot of static antennas at ... and I've had all of them pointed to EE in Hornsea as that was far less congested than the O2 4g service from the cell tower (on the caravan site). Now they've put in 5g that is likely not to be case.

However Vodafone also share the tower in the above case, and have NOT upgraded their service to 5g, showing that even if carriers like EE and Three share towers in some cases, they dont always upgrade their band or frequency support when the other carrier does.

EE have the most in general 4/5g coverage
Then Three.
Then Voda

O2 has a fair amount of 5g, but their 4g is lacking.

The imporant thing for all us motorhomers is what will work best rurally and exhibit below is the key point from : https://pedroc.co.uk/content/uk-commercial-mobile-spectrum

In general as we all know lowest frequencies travel furthest, and ... the 3 networks with the BEST 4/5g coverage are EE (who offer it on 5g only) so won't be of use much rurally, so as such on my equipment buying a EE sim isn't a great idea (except for fact they have a lot more higher frequency 4g bands). Three who are using both 4 and 5g services on B28, and O2 who are doing the same.
What this means to me is in rural Motorhome locations such as North Norfolk and rural southern UK, I suspect Three and O2 will SMOKE EE on a 4g device as they upgrade their existing towers over next 12-18 months, and until EE put 5g on ALL towers it'll likely remain so. (Remember adding a frequncy to existing 4g equipment is possible in many cases if there is enough backhaul bandwidth).

Key point will be when EE start lighting up their 700mhz it'll likely be 5g ONLY unlike O2 and Three based on above planning. Which will again limit coverage to only 5g capable devices. I've not seen a single tower broadcasting 5g on 700mhz (yet) on my devices which is why I'm sticking with 4g cat18 devices in one site at moment. When I do, I'll be getting a MU5001 or RUTX50!

My plans are to get a cheap O2 sim and test realigning one of my dishy antenna at the new 5g tower north of hornsea to see how well O2 are doing and if they have enabled B28 on it (yet).

As a motorhomer, the one sim I would not consider buying on any contract longer than a few months would be Vodafone, as they dont have any plans it seems in the frequency bands that go "further".

 

[starquake]

And yes, friend don't let friends buy cat4 routers, I think we need some form of sticky post on here to explain how doing so is quite literlaly a waste of time and money today ! I suspect this is why roof antenna get such a bad reputation as people see their phones (which are cat20) doing so much better.

Should say as RowleyBirkinQC says, it's ALSO why Three gets a bad rap in a lot of cases, as people end up on Threes "skinny" Band 20 coverage rurally (they only have 5mhz, which is good for about 8Mbit in perfect conditions on non-busy cell) as they don't realise that a higher category device may be able to bond band 20 with band 32, for a 80Mbit service.

 

[zac]

According to the very first post linked on the Teltonika forums you are better with all 4 antenna ports connected, if spending that kind of money on the router then i would want it powering on all cylinders not just half of them (my view only of course ) as its a fit and forget.

Also, RUTX50 uses a LTE Cat20 modem and, in order to fully utilize its capabilities, all four antennas are
preferred with identical features.

 

[Guigsy]

Ok, so theoretically, all 4 antennas are useful and active. And it doesn't matter which way round I attach them. Good to know there's no point wasting time there.

If anyone does have an RUTX50 with a second SIM (I've got EE and Smarty), have you worked out a good set of settings for the automatic switching? There's lots of parameters to play with. Either it switches too frequently (with the 30 seconds between with no connection while it signs on). Or it clings on to a poor connection. What works in one location is useless elsewhere. So I've been switching manually.

 

[starquake]

According to the very first post linked on the Teltonika forums you are better with all 4 antenna ports connected, if spending that kind of money on the router then i would want it powering on all cylinders not just half of them (my view only of course ) as its a fit and forget.

Remember it'll ONLY use the strongest signal on any port anyhow. It's how mobiles telephony works. The cellular network will always preference the signal with the highest gain on reception or on transmission. The device under hood will be sending status packets every few milliseconds to assertain that. The reason you need > 3 antenna is if you are bonding 3 in parallel in general, which as I have explained in UK is very rare indeed. If it becomes common I'd totally agree with you, and in Europe, yes, there WILL be carriers who bond 4 frequencies. In UK however, this is ludicriously rare, as celliular networks will like to disconnect their busy bands if your device is capable of using a clearer (ie, less customer frequency) rather than allowing you to bond and take capacity on an existing busy band.

As long as all ports are connected TO an antenna of any sort (so not hanging in free space, which would damage the antenna port) it's all good.

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[starquake]

Ok, so theoretically, all 4 antennas are useful and active. And it doesn't matter which way round I attach them. Good to know there's no point wasting time there.

If anyone does have an RUTX50 with a second SIM (I've got EE and Smarty), have you worked out a good set of settings for the automatic switching? There's lots of parameters to play with. Either it switches too frequently (with the 30 seconds between with no connection while it signs on). Or it clings on to a poor connection. What works in one location is useless elsewhere. So I've been switching manually.

On the Mikrotiks I run with similar featureset I'd leave it manual. And theres a good reason for that Guigsy as ahem EE have a habit of disconnecting cell customers every 12-24 hours. Three however are SUPER stable. You will cause failovers whilst the cell tower "reboots" twice a day and may not fail back if you rely on auto-switching, which is why I don't on one of my sites with EE + THree combo.

Should add my record on a Three sim staying connected to a Cell tower is OVER 120 days.

 

[zac]

Remember it'll ONLY use the strongest signal on any port anyhow. It's how mobiles telephony works. The cellular network will always preference the signal with the highest gain on reception or on transmission. The device under hood will be sending status packets every few milliseconds to assertain that. The reason you need > 3 antenna is if you are bonding 3 in parallel in general, which as I have explained in UK is very rare indeed. If it becomes common I'd totally agree with you, and in Europe, yes, there WILL be carriers who bond 4 frequencies. In UK however, this is ludicriously rare, as celliular networks will like to disconnect their busy bands if your device is capable of using a clearer (ie, less customer frequency) rather than allowing you to bond and take capacity on an existing busy band.

As long as all ports are connected TO an antenna of any sort (so not hanging in free space, which would damage the antenna port) it's all good.

My thoughts are that the teltonika RUTX50 is an expensive piece of kit and making use of all the features would just make sense to me but i get that its more money. I am waiting to install mine but that will happen shortly now i have cleaned the roof. I already have a panorama 5G antenna but this only has 2 antenna ports but i have purchased the poynting 4x4 mimo which will i fit just because i have it.
It's only money, you cant take it with you

 

[Guigsy]

On the Mikrotiks I run with similar featureset I'd leave it manual. And theres a good reason for that Guigsy as ahem EE have a habit of disconnecting cell customers every 12-24 hours. Three however are SUPER stable. You will cause failovers whilst the cell tower "reboots" twice a day and may not fail back if you rely on auto-switching, which is why I don't on one of my sites with EE + THree combo.

Should add my record on a Three sim staying connected to a Cell tower is OVER 120 days.

That would explain my occasional drops on EE...

Generally I've found that the common tale that Three are excellent in cities (until they get too congested) and EE gives a more even coverage elsewhere, to be roughly true. Three is either really quick or it plods. EE never reaches the same peaks, but it often works when Three doesn't.

Meanwhile my long term Vodafone SIM in my phone seems to be getting worse every year...

 

[starquake]

Should say the trick on Mikrotiks is on stopping "poor" connections, and hopefully you can configure a Teltonica for this Guigsy is to disable the slower bands that you get stuck on (as long as you can figure out how to reverse it as you will need the slower bands in some rural sites).

On Three we disable Band 20 and band 1 on a static install, to force use of B3/B32/B28 coverage on the site near Hornsea. Thats becuase a low signal on band 3 = 10Mbit versus near nil (under 1Mbit) on band 20, and about 2 Mbit on band 1. So band 3 is worth having, the rest less so.

On EE we also disable Band 20, and leave all other bands enabled.

However you would in a motorhome be constantly tweaking above, but in general I try to get my devices to stick to a weaker Band 3 signal if I can pick one up (band 3 on 1 bar is still many megabit/sec where band 20 on 4 bars is still only 2Mbit MAX due to congestion). Finding the guidance on this and knowing which frequencies are "skinny" and which have "lots" of capacity is the key to optimising 4 (and 5g), as it's no good using a frequency that only has 5mhz of capacity. The ZTE I have in the motorhome does not have a good debug mode unlike my Mikrotiks, so I can't turn off individual bands, which is a pain as it tends to get stuck on slow band 20 coverage.

I think the link I put above has a bandwidth calulator somewhere where you can plug numbers in to understand the max theoritical performance per band so you can work out which bands to prioritise over others.
It is worth noting that Band 1 and Band 3 and Band 20 are supported by cat4 devices so are busier, however of these the band 3 on Three at least is the widest and fattest coverage so it has the most bandwidth to give, so even when congested, it outperforms the other bands.

It is worth studyint the link above though so you know which bands are used by which sims in UK so you know which to enable/disable, assuming you "can" do this on a Teltonica.

 

[Kannon Fodda]

My head hurts now

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[ChrisL]

So much of performance is down to location, i'm currently getting 13 down and 8 up on my Tesco sim in a CAT 4 device and only 3.02 down and 2.46 up on an EE fast as is available SIM in a CAT 12 device. Neither have external antenna attached, but i'm not in a PVC so no Faraday cage effect as far as I'm aware.

 

[starquake]

So much of performance is down to location, i'm currently getting 13 down and 8 up on my Tesco sim in a CAT 4 device and only 3.02 down and 2.46 up on an EE fast as is available SIM in a CAT 12 device. Neither have external antenna attached, but i'm not in a PVC so no Faraday cage effect as far as I'm aware.

Location and gain of antenna -> that was the killer at clubfest and why no-ones phones worked AT ALL, all weekend (for most part). And Location is not the key in my view -> O2 in your example with 13 down is likely a very underloaded cell. (given a cat 4 device/cell combined MAX performance is 150Mbit, but 75 in real world). A cat12 device on same sim in same location should as cat12 device get 4 TIMES the performance in theroticial max conditions.. If you can swap your sims in each device and see what you get testing immediately before and after would be a suggestion as the cat4 device should be worse on EE and vice versa. Thats because the cat12 device has an encoding it can use with the cell tower which basically in laymans terms moves more data per timeslot in a cat12 device, an encoding that didn't exist back when cat4 specs were produced.. The complexity here is unfortunatly the lax nature of UK networks, just becuase your device can do a better encoding, doesn't mean in fact your local cell tower has been upgraded to support it, so the answer can be "no change".. A great example is a building in London I was involved in commisioning the networks in (which has a EE network in the building) -> until last year it still only had a single 10 Mbit/sec uplink to the entire buildings cell tower (which only served phones inside that building not anyone outside), but also cruicially only supported the cat4 encoding scheme rather than the improvements made since by more modern cell tower architecture/software stacks. The reason it wasn't upgraded on the encoding was precisely because the towers "uplink" was so weak, and in the city of London getting additional fibre runs in place can take years if the local nodes were fully used (which they were). After I left the uplink was improved to a 10Gbit link... (so 1000x the capacity back to EE) to cover 5g when they deployed that.. Back in day the same cell tower ran 3g using a 2Mbit/sec link, when 3g at the time max perforamnce was about 50Mbit, so the buildings uplink was ALWAYS weak for past 15 years.

Example gain of a roof antenna (usually 8-10dbi) is double that of a iphones "best" antenna, and mifi devices are not any better generally (usually 4-5dbi of gain). What that means in real world is the roof antenna will enable 15mhz of band 3 coverage in location your phone or mifi will get 5mhz of cat 20 without one. Simple gain physics unfortunatly.

Repeat that across other bands, and especially on further reaching bands (remember band 32 is 1500mhz so travels further than band 3, and is also 20mhz wide so faster than even band 3) and you can get decent reception on it. Cruicially with these bands the transmit gain doesn't matter as they are downlink only... When I say gain is roughly double, gain is also an exponential curve, so double the gain can equal 4 times the performance in "perfect" conditions. A cat4 device has no ability to use band 32 in addition as it requires a minimum of cat6 + a chip that supports it. Again band 32 needs a tower upgrade, and EE uses addtional band 3 instead of band 32 for same needs (EE run several band 3 frequencies in parallel).

I have no doubt mifis work even inside PVC's and on roof, but the gain figures are the key point. And most of the roof antennas gain is focussed in the 1500-2100mhz range today which is the exact frequencies today that the higher bandwith is avaialble. Your actual network choice has helped your device here, as O2 mostly use 900mhz on 4g over band 3 -> they ahve about the same amount (5mhz) of band 3 as Three have of band 20. This band doesn't get majorly impacted by a roof antenna -> so if you using a o2/voda sim in general a mifi will "be acceptable" without an antenna. However Three or EE would be AWFUL as majority of their signal is in bands that get terrible gain on a mifi antenna.

TBH at the (2) large motorhome festivals we've been at this year, on both what debug I could get on my device my device was in both cases using the "fatter" but higher frequency bands on which the antenna had the highest gain -> thats the difference. (ie, my Three was using B3+B32 joined). My phone was using B20 and not working at all which kind of proves the above lack of gain on a small antena.

I'm also not saying a mifi won't work well as it will in a stronger signal area, but in a weaker signal area a roof antenna is the difference between it working and you having zero signal -> and we've actually seen this.
Bear in mind I install huge Sky dish sized antenna for customers up East Yorks for grabbing EE signal in a location where a handset shows no signal and that only works becuase the antenna I use there have a massive 18dbi of gain. -> this provides > 100Mbit in a place where both mifi and handsets show 0 signal, or if they do have 1 bar, the customers have claimed EE doesn't work and not to waste money on an antenna not knowing the static van next door is getting home broadband like perforamnce. I put the kit in, charge a (small) margin, and the customer is happy given the best "wired" service in that location is 7Mbit.. The aim of the dish is that precise I have a annual job to visit all the customers with a ladder to reaim dishes due to wind load moving the dishes by half a degree, which knocks performance down by half, and you do need to resurvey the cell towers you can see from time to time to make sure the performance per customer is the best it can be. I have some customers on the same site using cell towers in Hornsea, some using Driffield and some using Bridlington as the treelines really impact the signal even between vans literally next to each enough enough that going further can gain 20Mbit. But it's quite nuts that I can aim at a tower in middle of a city over 6 miles away and get service. As stated above the O2 tower thats within 1 mile just got a 5g upgrade, so next job is to see how "strong" the uplink is to the tower is by doing some testing... and we'll advise customers to get a new sim/repoint dishes if it does prove "better".

The sheer basics from above is;
Max theoretical peformance of
cat 4 = 150Mbit
Cat 6 = 300 mBit
Cat 12 = 600Mbit
Cat 18 = 1.2Gbit
Cat 20 = > 1.6 Gbit.

In general that does mean a cat20 in same place as a cat4 device is suffering congestion tends to produceusable Internet, where the cat4 does not which is exactly what Kannon Fodda said originally. Unfortunatly it is that simple to understand without any of the actual science behind it. In a simpler analogy it's like saying a Ford fiesta from 10 years ago (cat4) can compete with a modern Tesla... as a spec cat4 is bloody old now. And yes there will be less busy cell towers that prove the opposite, but under identical loading one will work other will not.

Remember at clubfest all the phones were cat20 devices for most part and STILL didn't work becayse the antenna gain was too low and that is the point on antenna gain being the king at times of congestion as if you can pickup a signal at all nomatter how weak that isn't congested you can beat the local towers congestion.

 

[Guigsy]

Remember at clubfest all the phones were cat20 devices for most part and STILL didn't work becayse the antenna gain was too low and that is the point on antenna gain being the king at times of congestion as if you can pickup a signal at all nomatter how weak that isn't congested you can beat the local towers congestion.

Yeah, I've had this at a festival. My phone had a really good signal, but it was so congested, it was useless. My van with a roof antenna could grab a connection to a distant tower that most phones couldn't see. So I was getting a reasonable connection from what it was saying was equivalent to a 1-2 bar signal.

 

[starquake]

Yeah, I've had this at a festival. My phone had a really good signal, but it was so congested, it was useless. My van with a roof antenna could grab a connection to a distant tower that most phones couldn't see. So I was getting a reasonable connection from what it was saying was equivalent to a 1-2 bar signal.

That was my point 18Dbi in east yorks below Brid you can pickup like 5 towers in Brid on EE/Three, 3 from driffield, 1 from Brandesburton and 2 from hornsea. Likely could make hull or Grimsby too via the sea, but not really cell locked those (yet). A phone gets 1 bar off the hornsea band 20

It's nuts how radio works.

As an aside at Clubfest I was playing (I'm a ham radio enthusiast) with a mesh networking text messaging device with a small antenna I had brought from home called meshtastic. This uses ISM band so 868 mhz, which is a non licensed band, but similar to phones. It may surprise you to know from the middle of the field at clubfest I was speaking with another ham radio guy in Bristol using it via text messaging by bouncing off a node in Birmingham (clubfest was Telford, so even this hop was ~ 15 miles). But this is without ANY cell towers, thats how mental radio signal gain is if you put a high gain antenna off your roof. Should add meshtastic uses like milliwatts of signal compared with a phone so it's even more mental (its about 100 times less powerful).

 

[ChrisL]

Network cell info says I'm getting -120 dbm on band 3 EE which is pretty poor, I don’t think i'm all that far from the tower 557 mtrs according to cell tower locater, maybe i'm in a bit of a dip?

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[Gellyneck]

My head hurts now

Migraine now?

 

[starquake]

Ok, so theoretically, all 4 antennas are useful and active. And it doesn't matter which way round I attach them. Good to know there's no point wasting time there.

Theres another point which us hams are aware of btw, it's attenuation -> if you have too much gain (ie, ALL The antennas use a roof antenna with same gain), then what happens if you visit in a city at a site NEXT to a cell tower, as you end up picking all the other "localish" towers on the same frequency as well as the "strong" local signal. Then your gain may overload your receiver/mifi and cause "less" performance than a antenna with lower gain like a phone. This is a reaosn why some roof antennas give less performance than a phone in a city when you may be next to a lamppost providing 5g, and why connecting all 4 antennas can actualy be worse for you than ahem, not.

That is the trick to avoiding this is sometimes to actually do what some of you guys are already doing, ie, have 2 roof mounted antennas with higher gain, and 2 stubby lower gain ones internally out of interest. As this WILL provide better service in cities with a high(er) density of cell towers, as after all they are aimed at use for phones not roof antenna.

I fully intend to do the above and use some 2dbi stubby antennas internally and use the 5-8dbi panorama on roof to get best of both worlds when I do go 5g.

This is why the iphone antenna design has 3 of the 4 antennas with little gain on many bands with effectively one antenna targetting each band.

 

[starquake]

Network cell info says I'm getting -120 dbm on band 3 EE which is pretty poor, I don’t think i'm all that far from the tower 557 mtrs according to cell tower locater, maybe i'm in a bit of a dip?

Yeah, thats awful, so you are getting crappy signal on band 3, -100 or less is what you want for decent > 20mbit perofrmance. I'd say that is proving you need a roof antenna, as even a crappy one at 500 metres should give > 20Mbit. Remember DBI isn't everything, I usually look for the CQI score that usually kicks in at ~ -100dbi -> if you not getting a CQI score of > 10 you not using the best codec for data. QPSK is the cat4 (only codec) and 64QAM I think was made avaialble from cat12. But if you not getting a CQI of above 10 you will usually get under 10Mbit. The code rates below roughly equate to how much data you can move per "timeslot" on a cell.

Shoul add most devices only show a CQI score when they activeily in use, so I leave a download running on a PC whilst I align if it's a directional antenna. What I can also say is you are not hitting the signal threshold to use any of the more advanced codecs your cat12 device supports.

 

[Lee Rasberry]

So to update this thread I bit the bullet and acquired a RUTX50.

Running a Smarty data only sim (which uses Three), at Newark Show I was averaging about 10mbps on a 4G service. This was using my existing roof aerial, the 2x2 Panorama thing, as above. OK so that speed is nothing to get excited about, but at least I could stream TV.

By comparison the Huawei was struggling to get any connection, and at best it was 1mpbs. Useless. Worth noting that my neighbours on the rally field also using Three based services were struggling for connectivity via various phone, router and aerial setups.

The higher Cat 20 of the RUTX50 seemed to be achieving something, although I didn't probe settings to establish exactly what bands were connecting. Of course only two of the four aerials led to outside, the other two had the provided basic indoor aerial stalk things, which no doubt achieved very little given the internal faraday cage effect prevalent in my PVC.

I had strongly considered the MU5001, but eventually discounted it. There are confused, conflicting reviews over the internal that although it is Cat 22, for anything 4G it only uses it's own internal aerials, and the 2 external aerials only come into action on a 5G service. Certainly there seems to be one company offering a modification service to add external connection ports to the ZTE device. So potentially, inside my PVC faraday cage, the MU5001 on internal aerials would perform worse than the Huawei I was trying to replace. I decided to play safe, spend the extra money, and go belt and braces for something that is clearly compatible, the RUTX50.

I will now consider whether to upgrade the rooftop aerial to a 4x4 mimo device. More decisions.

I've had it from multiple very reliable sources that the standard external antenna inputs on the MU5001 are for 5G only. I personally consider this a major flaw in using it for a leisure vehicle.

If you are using a RUTX50 with a 2x2 external antenna, make sure you connect your antenna to the 'outside' two antenna connections, i.e. 1 and 4. This is based on the technical info I've got on the Quectel RG501Q-EU modem, and my own testing. We supply our Roam 5G kits with 4x4 and 2x2 antennas, and using 1 and 4 (aka ANT0 and ANT3 gives the best performance by far.

From the testing we did when developing our own 4x4 antenna, we found that it was giving us speeds of around 25%-40% higher than the 2x2 on 4G and 5G. I'd also expect this performance gap to increase as more and more 5G infrastructure gets rolled out. I'm not aware of any of our customers that have gone to the trouble of removing a perfectly good 2x2 to swap with a 4x4 to get an extra 50mbps.

 

[starquake]

From the testing we did when developing our own 4x4 antenna, we found that it was giving us speeds of around 25%-40% higher than the 2x2 on 4G and 5G. I'd also expect this performance gap to increase as more and more 5G infrastructure gets rolled out. I'm not aware of any of our customers that have gone to the trouble of removing a perfectly good 2x2 to swap with a 4x4 to get an extra 50mbps.

Be interested when you do test with 4x4 if it's slower when you park next to a cell tower (I can suggest some sites, Great Yarmouth CAMC is a great one as the 5g tower for EE and Three is LITERALLY as you drive into the site). Given that area has "lots" of 5g, high gain on roof may be a bad thing... (ditto in London). I'm seriously considering actually taking 4 stubby antenna for the X50 (or whatever 5g device I go for) to cover picking up signal too far away in this case (ie to limit interfereance from high powered local cell towers).

I suspect you are right though eventually there will be multiple frequencies (for 5g) deployed which we can reach in rural campsites.
When you do your antenna design are you planning to add an antenna specifically for the lower frequencies on campsites with higher SNR, as that would actually be useful, and it's a gap in market, as at moment as I think you know -> the standard motorhome roof mounts have good gain on 1500-2100 mhz typcially and again in the 5g 3000+ mhz ranges, but usually have LESS gain in the "more useful" to motorhomers 700-900mhz range. I say thats more useful, as in Wales, North Norflk and other such rural areas often the lower frequencies are all you can receive be it 3, 4, or 5g signal. At moent the issue with 5g is the fact the networks are being rather slow to roll it out ourside of high population areas (as an example my favourite static van park south of Brid, there is ONLY one cell tower reachable with 5g enabled, and about 25 on 4g!)

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