WiFi And Antenna

WiFi and antenna

The wireless enthusiasts have been again purposing satellite dishes for a couple years now. A dish that big is regularly overkill for most people and current mini-dishes work just as well. The dish helps spotlight the radio waves onto a directional antenna feed. The building of biquad antenna feeds because it offers very good performance and is pretty merciful when it comes to assembly errors. Follow along as we assemble the feed, attach it to a DirecTV dish and test out its performance.
How to build the antenna?


Biquad antennas can be built from common materials that are nice because one do not have to borrow around for the perfectly sized soup can. Buy some specialized parts before getting started though. The most important part is the small silver panel mounts N-connector in the center of the picture. The N-connector is standard across the majority of commercial antennas and one can connect them to the wireless devices using pigtails. The longer pigtail is a RP-TNC to N-Male pigtail are use to connect the antenna to a Linksys WRT54G access point. The short pigtail is an RP-MMCX to N-Male for linking to Senao 2511CD PLUS EXT2 WiFi card.

Range:

The array of the signal will depend on several factors, including power output of the wireless card or router, receive strength of the wireless card that can be obstructed by buildings or trees which may be in the way of the transmitting path, walls. Since there are so many factors that can determine the overall range of the wireless system, it is impossible to cover all. A rule of thumb however is to always choosing an antenna that one thinks may be overkill. Because the power output is extremely small it is necessary to have as much gain as possible. The majority of wireless cards have a power output of 32 milli watts, which is roughly the same amount of power it takes to light a high power LED. LEDs are bright but imaging trying to see one at a large distance or through a building or trees. That is why the antenna is critical for amplifying that signal so it is as strong as possible.