My first post on here. I live in the sticks AKA the Lincolnshire Wolds and am planning to away from my 3Mb/s ADSL to 4G Mobile BBand.
I was given an external 4G antenna by a friend, it has no markings to say who made it and the coax cable that's fixed to the PCB inside has an odd slightly oversized core, so normal SMA connectors don't fit. The antenna works with the Huawei 535 that I bought but the cables are too short.
I've taken the cover off to see inside but there are no clues apart from the PCB which has the number 2200199 on it.
Just wondered if anyone has any ideas about where it might have been made so I can get some specs on the cable used etc?
The outer case looks very like the LowcostMobile antenna (product link), which has two hard wired leads and a plain white outer case.
The inner elements are quite different to what I expected having seen the inside of various other antennas. Going by the circle elements sizes, the top one likely covers the 2.6GHz bands 7 and 38, the second top one bands 1 and 3 and the larger one covers the <1GHz bands 8, 20 and 28. The large square one at the bottom is the reflector / ground. I'm not quite sure how they're implementing 2x2 MIMO as I would have expected to see the metal of the circles divided.
I think the best option here for extending the leads would be to get a pair of SMA male to female extension leads, preferably as short as possible to reach the router to minimise signal loss along the cables.
(17/02/2023, 10:13 PM)Seán Wrote: The outer case looks very like the LowcostMobile antenna (product link), which has two hard wired leads and a plain white outer case.
The inner elements are quite different to what I expected having seen the inside of various other antennas. Going by the circle elements sizes, the top one likely covers the 2.6GHz bands 7 and 38, the second top one bands 1 and 3 and the larger one covers the <1GHz bands 8, 20 and 28. The large square one at the bottom is the reflector / ground. I'm not quite sure how they're implementing 2x2 MIMO as I would have expected to see the metal of the circles divided.
I think the best option here for extending the leads would be to get a pair of SMA male to female extension leads, preferably as short as possible to reach the router to minimise signal loss along the cables.
Many thanks for the info, it'll help me when I look at the bands that are available locally. I'm probably going to go with iD Mobile who use the Three network in the UK, mainly down to cost. Unfortunately, the local masts that carry Three only have 4G at about 4Mbit/s but do have 3G at around 20-25Mbit/s. The coverage map says otherwise but that's nothing new.
One problem with the existing cables is that the inner copper core is slightly too big for the RG58 SMA connector pin, in order to test the antenna, I had to file the core down slightly so that I could get the pin to go over the core. So I'm thinking about soldering another cable in place of the existing cable. This will also mean that if I have to put the antenna outside instead of in the loft, there will be no exposed connections.
I was in a bit of a rush when I first posted last night and for some reason could only get one picture, I've added the PCB and the outer case as they might give further clues.
18/02/2023, 04:40 PM (This post was last modified: 18/02/2023, 04:41 PM by Seán.)
That PCB solves the mystery as those PCB traces are the individual antenna elements I was expecting to see. The long lines cover the low bands and the shorter lines cover the upper bands, a few with +/-45 degree polarisation. This means the metal circles adsorb unwanted interference in any polarisation on the reverse side.
From what I can tell based on the case image and the SMA connector connector pin issue, that is a Tupavco TP562 LTE antenna intended for the US cellular networks: https://www.tupavco.com/collections/cell...-9db-tp562
It is factory supplied with RP-SMA connectors, which do not have a centre pin. This means the inner conductor does not make contact with regular female SMA connectors on European mobile routers. If you plan soldering another cable in its place, try getting cables with SMA connectors unless you have a SMA capable crimp tool.
The antenna covers most of the UK network 4G bands except 4G band 32 (1500MHz), so this antenna may not perform well where Three or Vodafone operates 4G band 32.
Wow, many thanks for the detective work! Yes, it looks exactly the same from the outside and from the back screw holes and the pole mount. I'll have a read on the antenna on the web site. When I got the antenna it had some very large screw connectors (I forget the name of them, see picture) crimped on. They were no good for what I wanted so I cut them off before realising the cable was not a standard RG58.
The friend that gave me the antenna also has some crimp tools but depending on the costs of buying plain cable vs pre-crimped, the plan would be to buy some ready crimped cable and cut off one end for soldering straight to the board.
IIRC, Three 4G is Band 28 where I live so it should work, as to whether it'll be better than just the router remains to be seen.
A quick update. The supplier (Tupavco) wrote back to me about the cable spec on the antenna, seems it is LMR/LLC 200 which has a slightly larger dia core, plus a lower loss than RG58. Given this, it may well be worth saving the original cable.
My ADSL contract finished in June, so I'll take another look nearer the date.
16/05/2023, 02:59 PM (This post was last modified: 16/05/2023, 04:03 PM by cancunia.)
My ADSL contract comes to an end in June so I'm now actively preparing for Mobile Broadband. I've mounted the Tupavco antenna outside by an upstairs window and pointed it in the general direction of the nearest towers at a local racetrack. For now, I have 2x 3m leads from the antenna through an open window.
Using a B535-333 router & ID Mobile (Three) SIM with no external antenna, I get up to 20mbit/s but with the antenna connected I only get 12-13mbit/s. I'm wondering if this is because I'm using 3G and the antenna is designed for 4G?
The thing is that the local Three 4G service is a maximum of 4mbit/s so I'm limited to 3G.
I'll get a Lyca SIM as they are doing a 1p / month deal at the moment and see if the antenna improves things on 4G.
Edit:
A quick update, I pointed the antenna at another tower which has line of sight but limited 4G speed. The antenna does make a real positive difference when using a 4G connection.
Edit 2:
Well, it looks like the tower which has line of sight to my house that I thought only carried 4G might also have 3G as I get a much better 3G speed from the antenna when it's pointed that way.
From reading the spec of the Tupavco, it works in the range of 1710-2170 and from what I've read Three uses 2100 for 3G so maybe it should work ok after all.
Unfortunately, Three won't give me any info on their speed or capacity locally so it's all a bit hit & miss.
02/08/2023, 07:35 AM (This post was last modified: 02/08/2023, 08:58 AM by cancunia.)
I'm trying to understand the antenna radiation pattern from the Tupavco website but it makes no sense to me. There are 2 plots within each of the 6 diagrams so I'm guessing that these are the +45 & -45 plots but the labels on the diagrams say otherwise. I'm interested because I'd like to get the best signal from a tower that's about 3KM just over the hill from me. Any thoughts on what the graphs mean?
Thanks
A quick update, after looking at some other radiation patterns, perhaps the blue & red are xy & yz or azimuth & elevation?
The radiation patterns should indicate the relative antenna gain in dB to the 0 degree position. The inner circles are usually spaced either in 3dB, 6dB or 10dB steps, although difficult to tell from the above image. For example, if pattern line crosses the -6dB circle at the 30 degree position, then the antenna is 6dB less sensitive to signals coming in or being transmitted from that angle.
To me it looks like the red pattern should not be rotated 90 degrees from the blue pattern. Generally they are overlaid one above the other to show the radiation pattern for each frequency band. In this case it looks like the blue pattern represents the lower end of the frequency range (e.g. 698MHz for the top left image) and the red pattern represents the upper end (e.g. 960MHz for the top left image). Higher frequencies typically have narrower beamwidths and likewise with higher gain antennas, which means the antenna is less sensitive to interference coming in from other angles.
Strange stuff! I emailed Tupavco a while ago about this, but never got a reply.
In any case, if the diagrams are in any way reliable, it looks like there's no appreciable drop off within 10 degrees of pointing at the target?
I've been using the antenna with a Smarty (Three) UK SIM in my router for a few weeks now but on 3G as the 4G signal from the local mast is just about unusable, the other carrier on the mast is EE and looks to be just about as bad while being a lot more expensive. It's a shame as the mast is not too far and I have line of sight to it.
The mast also covers Cadwell Park race track but from a different cell and that gets a reasonable 4G signal on Three. There's no Three mast at Cadwell but Vodafone & EE & O2 are there.
With the upcoming switch off of 3G in the UK I'm looking at alternative 4G signals and unless / until Three improve the service on my local mast, that means Cadwell Park which is just over the hill from me. I've tested Vodafone and get reasonable data speeds but might well see a big drop when there's a major event at the track. Later this month, it's just about the biggest event of the year (BSB) so I'll do some testing then and see what happens.
