CanTennae: A cheap way to improve MyWireless signal strength.

A Cantenna is a homemade antenna using a coffee can, or even a Pringles can. These are typically called “WaveGuide” antennae since they guide/focus the waves.

This section will be expanded once I take some time to complete it. In the meantime, there are some pictures available here:  https://rodent.za.net/files/cantenna

Since MyWireless generally uses the same frequency as 802.11 kit, any 802.11 antenna design should suffice.

A lot of marvelous, yet highly experimental information about CanTennae is available at http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/DirectionalAntenna

This is what my Cantenna design was based off.

The best kind of antenna for MyWireless is a *directional* antenna, since it allows you to improve your return signal to the base station.

Cabling:

Cabling from your antenna is very important. You can calculate how much signall loss there is in the cable by using this calculator http://www.timesmicrowave.com/cgi-bin/calculate.pl

LMR195 seems to be used quite often, but over a 15m stretch of LMR195 you will lose 9db. LMR400 is more expensive, but over the same length will only lose 3dB

Author: roelf on November 19, 2006
Category: Hardware
Tags: , , ,

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