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Old July 4th 06, 09:36 AM posted to alt.internet.wireless,rec.radio.amateur.homebrew,rec.radio.amateur.equipment
Beverly Erlebacher Beverly Erlebacher is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Jul 2006
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Default How to calculate increase of home wireless router range?

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 06:28:16 -0000, Dave Platt wrote:
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?


dBi refers to gain relative to an "isotropic" antenna
dBd refers to gain relative to a half-wave dipole
dBi numbers are approximately 2 dB higher than dBd numbers,
for the same actual amount of gain.


Hi Dave,

Oh my. I guess the Hawking marketing folks were trying to trick me by
quoting a decibel number that was higher those I compared with.
15 dBi ~= 15 -2 ~= 13 dBd

That makes the $50 USD 15 dBi Hawking HAI15SC Hi_Gain Antenna drop down
from a gain of 32X power to only 20X power which gives me about a 4X range.

13 dBd = 10^(13/10) power ~= 20x power

Assuming the square of the power is the range, I get 4X range.
20^(1/2) ~= 4X range

Assuming my reliable range is 100 feet, that equates to 400 feet of range.
100 feet * 4 = 400 feet range

Interestingly, for comparison purposes, that is the SAME RANGE that the
much more expensive Linksys (Cisco) WRT300N router claims.

Do these calculations make sense?
Beverly