Have two Halowlink1 routers in trying to connect in extended mode over a 1400 foot link. There are many trees between the two devices. I do have this working with the included antenna’s and 20’ extension cables. The speed is an issue though. I’m only getting about a .5 mbs link. I could live with 1 mbs for my purposes but can’t seem to get that much. I have configured slower channels to get the link stable. My question is what directional antenna would you recommend? By the way, my signal strength is around -95 dbi.
That’s quite a low signal strength! What is the reported noise?
I can’t make any guarantees or strong recommendations, and the data I will refer to is not formalised so treat it as anecdotal.
We’ve done some similar testing - but perhaps a lower density of trees - at a similar distance (500m), and achieved ~9MBps UDP throughput with the following dipoles.
- Seeed 318020389. Dipole. 2.6dBi.
- Pulse W1063M. Dipole. 1dBi
These two antennas are similar to what ships with the HaLowLink1.
In this single set of tests, we found the following two smaller dipoles marginally outperformed the following directional panel antenna!
- TE Connectivity AV90209H-FNF. Panel. 9.5dBi
And a Yagi tested in the same environment did not associate.
So instead, you might want to consider a higher gain omni-directional antenna. The following is a fairly large antenna used in some rural deployments achieving kilometers of range.
- DX Engineering DMN-BC920. Omni-directional, 9dBi.
I’m sure you could experiment with a lower gain.
Height is likely to be your friend here too. Is it possible to mount the antennas on both sides higher up?
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Thanks for the ideas. Noise is around -105. Using the antennas at 6’ and 20’ makes no difference. I’d probably need to be 60’ or more at each end to get to the top of the trees.