Passive Repeaters for Mobile Telephone or WiFi Signal

Hello Laurence,

This is food for thought, especially when no one you contacted has helped to suggest products available ...

I've been looking into this issue and think you should visit this site http://www.criterioncellular.com/repeaters/ for more information.

Cheers,

Ethobil

There are high gain antennas for use with a mobile phone, of course it has to be connected to the antenna at the time, so it is not quite so mobile, but that may not bother you....they are generally in use in areas where signals are weak....exactly your problem....

Wi Fi over the hill is probably asking too much i feel, but i could be wrong, maybe someone else knows of a system to help.

Placing your antennas on the ridge and leading a cable(s) down to your house may help you on both scores....

There are commercially available femtocells, that provide cellphone service for your home, and put your signal onto a landline. The same landline can carry a DSL signal from your computer, however it is originated. It is simple, it works.

Most cost effective for cellular will be the femtocell recommended by leveles. That will have no impact on the WiFi signal, however.

I poked around Telefonica's web site a bit. Couldn't find anything on a femtocell that they offer, but you may have better luck.

One thing to remember, it is IMPERATIVE that you get your femtocell from your wireless provider because it has to use your broadband connection to get back to it terrestrial network. In setting up a femtocell, you are essentially establishing a new "tower" for your wireless provider. This new "tower" has to connect to their network in order to route calls and bill properly. (Since you are providing the back haul, you may get some sort of better deal, like more minutes or unlimited minutes on calls placed through the femtocell.)

Having a broadband back haul would also solve your WiFi issue in that you could set up an inexpensive wireless router to provide WiFi signal throughout your home.

I have used a femtocell on a CDMA network on a DSL connection. Works great. Good call quality and no degradation of the data throughput -- even when using the computer and making calls simultaneously.

Why not try two antennas back-to-back - one aimed at a strong incoming source on the ridge and the second aimed at your house where a third antenna is pointing toward it. Wouldn't cost as much as an active system to try out - maybe make a deal to return antennas for restocking charge only if the the test doesn't work out.

Yes passive repeaters work- what you need is an antenna aimed at the transmitter, connected to an antenna by dual cable, aimed towards your location- & an antenna at your location aimed to the passive repeater- it works with tv!.

In my view, using passive antenna(s) and with a physical downward connection is not feasible. Cable loss would be an big issue.

Selected antennas located at the ridge line directional to and fro the point of origination and the below may just suffice. One for each frequency band as applicable, keeping cable lengths to a very minimum (a few meters). I've done this with 460 MHz and works well.

This is probably an old post, but for some reason I was googling similar information. You can definitely do a passive repeater, people underestimate the gain a good directional antenna can get, and cable loss is usually very low. You do need to make sure that your second antenna isn't an omni though, because you don't want your passive repeater having a silly little feedback loop. Not that it would do much, it being passive, but it could be irritating. I would put a yagi or a dish antenna on your ridge line, aim it directly at the tower, and immediately behind it put an omni in a corner reflector or possibly a yagi (depending on how far you are from the ridge line, it might actually cover your entire house, which would be good.