"Beverly Erlebacher" wrote in message
.. .
Can you help me roughly CALCULATE how to increase the range of my
home
Internet wireless WiFi setup to a shed 300 feet away from my house?
Presently, I can walk about half the way through the wooded area to
the
shed with my laptop in hand before I lose the connection to the
PCMCIA
802.11b,g Linksys card. Basically I need to gain 150 feet in
"range".
But how?
At the store, I immediately become confused as I try to compare $30
USD
omnidirectional antennas (D-Link ANT24-070) that boost "power" by a
claimed
7 db; $50 USD directional corner antennas (Hawking HAI15SC) that
claim 15
dbi (whatever a dBi is); and $150 USD 802.11N routers that claim to
boost
omnidirectional "range" by 4x (Linksys WRT300N).
How does an omnidirectional 7 db or directional 15 dBi boost in
"power"
equate to range?
Approximately how many decibels of (omnidirectional or directional)
power
do I really need to boost my WiFi range from about 150 feet to the
300 feet
I need?
Looking up what a decibel is
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel#Definition), I
calculate the D-Link ANT24-070 omnidirectional antenna gives me
about 5
times the power (assuming 7 db = 10^7/10 ~= 5); but does this get me
the
additional 150 feet of range to my shed?
Spending almost twice as much money on the Hawking HAI15SC
directional
antenna gets me roughly 30 times the power (assuming 15 db =
10^15/10 ~=
32); but is that enough power to get me the range to my shed?
Indeed, is there some way to add a Hawking 15db antenna on the
receiving
end to get 1,000 times the power (15 db + 15 db = 30 db = 10^30/10
~=
1,000); but what would I hook the wire output from this receiving
antenna
to in the shed (I can't hook it to the pcmcia card, can I)?
Given those db calculations, how do I compare the antenna options
with
replacing my home 802.11b,g router with the 4X range $150 USD
Linksys
802.11n WRT300N router and the required $120 USD Linksys WPC300N
PCMCIA
card (assuming 6 db = 10^6/10)?Will this three-antenna 802.11n
router be
forced to drop down to 1X speeds because inside my house my kid's
laptops
will all be using 802.11b or 802.11g? Or can the router work on both
802.11g to one computer and on 802.11n to the other computer at the
same
time?
I'm so confused!
All I want is to make a well-informed buying decision to increase my
WiFi
range reliably to 300 feet to a known point.
Can you help me sort out all these very confusing variable (to me
anyway)?
I have no training in electrical engineering; but I can google.
Thank you,
Beverly
==========================================
Very simply - four times the transmitter power ( +6 dB ) doubles the
range.
Is your receiver sufficiently sensitive? Or is the received signal
below the noise level?
----
Reg.