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Dual Antennas

Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2020 3:00 pm
by brandon.maness
I have a quick question and I am new to the LTE game. I have 2 Yagi directional antennas that I am planning to use with my Nighthawk 1100 and was wondering if only using one cable with splitters would be ok or would even improve my signal quality? I am with AT&T through Nomad internet and have no LTE at the moment with 1 antenna about 20 feet in the air and aimed at the closest tower. I get 7mbps at best at the moment. Once again, new to the game and just trying to get some kind of decent speed. Also, we have recently sold our house and am trying not to drill holes in my camper to accomplish this feat. I have the one cable routed now and I like the set up as long as it will work out. Thanks in advance.

Re: Dual Antennas

Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2020 10:15 pm
by Didneywhorl
The Nighthawk has 4 internal antennas for 4x4 MIMO. The external antenna ports disable these internal antennas when the ports are used. This is only really recommended if you just can not get signal. Many people even mount their Nighthawk in an enclosure and mount it up high. If you have to use an external antenna, I always recommend a matched pair. Using a splitter/combiner will cause noise issues and likely make the signal useless.

With one antenna you are using what you can to get connected, but if your looking to speed things up, then adding a matched antenna to the other port would be best. That or try putting the Nighthawk up high without external antennas as a test and see what you can get.

Re: Dual Antennas

Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2020 10:33 pm
by Dr-BroadBand
Would bring the M1 nighthawk to the cell tower and do a speed test to get a baseline.

Also if you could go into the settings in Advanced Info and let the group
Know what are the readings of
RSRP ?
RSRQ ?
RS-SINR ?

Would be helpful :ugeek:

See https://youtu.be/AqFD2b6yz-w

https://youtu.be/n-JGTw6A7Vc

Re: Dual Antennas

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2020 9:35 am
by RuralLTEHacker
I have a question related to setting up dual MIMO 2x2 directional/yagi antennas. But I am also researching band locking to lock my modem into the best channel/band. My question: Can 2x2 MIMO antenna setup work with band-locking or are these impossible to use together? Not sure how MIMO works? Does it establish connections on different bands or 2 connections on the same band or either? THANKS! :)

Re: Dual Antennas

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:39 am
by Didneywhorl
RuralLTEHacker wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 9:35 am I have a question related to setting up dual MIMO 2x2 directional/yagi antennas. But I am also researching band locking to lock my modem into the best channel/band. My question: Can 2x2 MIMO antenna setup work with band-locking or are these impossible to use together? Not sure how MIMO works? Does it establish connections on different bands or 2 connections on the same band or either? THANKS! :)
2x2 MIMO is a capability of the modem itself. It literally just means using 2 antennas at once. Its more complicated than that, but that's most users need to understand really. 4x4 MIMO ... 4 antennas.

Band locking is a separate function of the modem. Carrier aggregation is yet another function. you can technically carrier aggregate over a single antenna band locked to a single frequency.

Band locking must be to bands the modem supports, and the antenna must support those frequency ranges. This is why choosing your antennas properly is important, though simply using a wideband antenna generally covers it all.

Carrier aggregation is the use of multiple bands at once, sometimes simply multiples of the same bands, its all dependent on the capability of both the modem as well as the cell towers support of aggregation.