If you are new to wireless technology, the multitude of antenna shapes, sizes, styles and gains can be bewildering at first. Will you need a dish antenna, a grid, a Yagi or just a rubber duck?
Fortunately, by following a few rules of thumb, you can get a hang of the different styles and the applications they fill. It starts with a complete survey of the area where you need coverage: its shape, size and obstructions found within it. With these details on hand, you'll need to consider the following factors:
Beam Width
One of the key differences between antenna styles is the "beam width" and direction. In general, the narrower the beam width the more powerful the signal is in a particular direction. That's not to say Omni directional antennas are weak, but merely that the signal strength is spread in a different way (which may or may not be appropriate for your application).
Antenna Polarity
Another aspect of antennas to keep in mind is the polarity. While wireless signals travel, they move as a wave. Just like ripples on the surface of water, waves that move in the same direction cancel each other out. Waves in different directions do not. In a similar way, too many antennas set up in a vertical polarization in an area can cancel each other out, resulting in extremely poor signals.
In the case where a lot of wireless signals in the same band may be required, setting up antennas with different polarities can improve the performance of each signal. In some instances, you may want to set up "dual polarized" antennas, which include both vertical and horizontal polarities. These and other types of polarities (such as "cross polarized" and "circular polarized") can improve the strength and distance of signals in multiple ways.
Antenna Gain
The final consideration for choosing your antenna is antenna gain. Measured in decibels (dB), it is commonly written as a number followed by "dBi" (the "i" at the end is for "Isotropic", and indicates that the number is relative to an imaginary, "perfect" dipole radiation). In general, the higher the dBi the stronger the signal in whatever direction it is going.
While it may seem tempting to simply buy the antenna with the highest gain for your beam width and polarization, it may not be relevant for your application. You should seek a dBi relative to the size of the space that the signal needs to cover. In many cases, a high gain will provide poor coverage closer to the antenna and better coverage further away.
For instance, setting up an Omni directional antenna in the center of a small cafe would require a smaller gain. If you use an antenna with too large a gain, people using devices in the street outside of the cafe would have better signal than those in the cafe itself because the total signal would be stretched.
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