antenna-theory.com

[rugman]

Aloha everyone,

I'm working on building a self sustaining farm in Hawaii and need some assistance with getting better cell reception from Verizon.

The goal is to have Internet, my current LTE connection comes and goes, so I know it's possible to obtain.

My materials are very limited, and I would like to build a passive system to re-radiate the current signal down to our camp. Is something like this possible?

I know how to build things, but my electrical engineering skills are still new. Any ideas / guidance would be appreciated so I can fully utilize the small bursts of internet I do get

Thanks!

[helix]

This is a very interesting question. How far is your camp from the nearest cell tower?

[coundpake]

This might not be the best idea (for reasons pointed out below) but as far as a passive system goes...

You could use an LTE (700 MHz) directional antenna (Yagi-Uda) pointed towards your nearest/strongest Verizon LTE tower, a short coaxial cable to bring signal into your camp and an LTE omnidirectional antenna (dipole probably fine) to retransmit the signal.

But there will be losses in the antennas and cable so you won't get nearly as much as with a active signal booster / range extender.

It might be difficult to tune the direction of the Yagi short of using a compass and the direction of nearest tower from a Verizon map. But once the system is hooked up you could change the direction and look at the received signal strength on your phone.