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nhantenna's avatar
nhantenna
Apprentice
Nov 15, 2017

Nighthawk LTE hotspot + external antennas

I am in the United States.  I purchased the Nighthawk LTE hotspot directly from AT&T.  I have several technical questions about the two external antenna ports on this hotspot. 1) Do the external ant...
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UK-based's avatar
UK-based
Luminary
Feb 03, 2018

I'm also in the UK with EE as my carrier. I'm using this external antenna from Poynting, which is actually a dual-polarised omni-directional antenna in one housing (price in the UK around £77.50), with 2 cables and SMA connectors (requiring 2 pigtail SMA to TS-9 adapters for connection to the M1). Prior to installing this antenna I had 2-3 signal strength bars on the M1, which increased to 5 bars after installation. The best download speed on a wired connection has been 90Mbps. I'm in a rural location about 3.5km from the mast.

 

The specs. for the Poynting XPOL-A0001 antenna give gain at 790-960MHz as 1.6dBi and gain at 1710-2700MHz as 4dBi. This is quite a lot less gain than the CSG Networks 66008X ODN that you recommended, TeeJay74, which is quoted as offering 6.0dBi gain at 698-960MHz and 8.0dBi at 1710-2700MHz. After a quick search, I couldn't find a UK supplier for this antenna but here's a similar CSG antenna on Amazon with gain of 4-5dBi, costing £88.37. And here's a similar Poynting antenna with 5-6dBi gain for £109.32. In both cases it would be necessary to buy 2 of these, costing a total of between £176 and £218. So the increased gain obviously comes at a price.

 

TeeJay74, if the 2 separate antennas were used, how should they be oriented for the UK's EE carrier, and what would the best separation be? Would one be mounted vertically and the other horizontally? I guess the latter could end up with water ingress. What about one at 45 degrees from vertical and the other at -45 degrees from vertical? What separation in this case?

TeeJay74's avatar
TeeJay74
Virtuoso
Feb 03, 2018

What makes omni antennas special, is their ability to utilize signal reflections more effectively than other antenna types. If your surroundings have lot of hard material surfaces then there are lot of reflections. Using them can provide some extra speed. Then antenna oriéntation thing.

I have tested -45/+45 , horizontal/vertical and both vertical orientation setups. Theorist say for Mimo, orientation should be exactly 90° between antennas.  When signal reflects there is almost certainly some twist and bend. However, vertical/vertical setup can provide almost similar performance. So I suggest it may not be worth to put too much attention to this omni orientation thing, because vertical/horizontal vs vertical/vertical can provide almost equal performance. Some day v/h is better, other day v/v can be slightly better. When I tested MR1100 and good table omni mimo in car setup, speed differences were 10-30 Mbps when orientation changed. That was very small difference, because my download was about 500 Mbps that time. Only one thing needs more investigation and that is separation distance between outdoor omni antennas. Probably 50 cm would be good, I guess.