View Full Version : Laptop clients, horizontal/vertical
So I wanted to see if anybody here had experience with the following question:
Over the relatively short distance which is still appropriate for laptop clients, has anybody noticed if vertical works better than horizontal or both work equally as well or what?
The max distance from the AP is about 900 feet and the place is a marina so I would prefer to use horizontal if it will generally still work ok with laptops. I may also consider setting up diversity since it is known to be a small help to receive quality when dealing with multipath and there will be plenty of that. I'm going to use 120 degree sector panels attached to WLM54Gs to best cover the necessary area.
I don't know for sure if the crappy low-gain antennas found in laptops and PCMCIA cards are at all sensitive to whether the AP is horizontal or vertical. I know they are not over real short distances, but once you get out to 300-900 feet I'm wondering...
go.fast
04-03-2007, 08:15 AM
It's hard telling.
I've used mostly all Hor for my micro pops over the years. I've use Pac's 2 gig H omni's and some Superpass H omni's.
The last year I've been using pac's cheapo V 9db omni's and I swear they work better, but I have nothing to back this up except my feelings. It's not like I change out the antennas and do a before and after.
Hm, I don't know, I have unconfirmed stuff taken from the middle of some mailing list or forum thread saying a lot of laptops actually have horizontally-polarized antennas. I really don't know if that's true or not. It might be the case with PCMCIA wifi adapters with their cruddy little 2dBi antennas. I wonder what the approximate specs are on the "antennas" that are built into people's laptops.
go.fast
04-03-2007, 08:48 AM
I wonder what the approximate specs are on the "antennas" that are built into people's laptops.
Would be good to see typical laptop antenna specs.
I've often wondered what adding the 2nd cross polorized diversity antenna to a pop would do.
But for some reason I keep falling back to the theory you use one polarity or the other to create seperation. for instance 1V 6H 11V.
rbolduc
04-03-2007, 08:58 AM
Hm, I don't know, I have unconfirmed stuff taken from the middle of some mailing list or forum thread saying a lot of laptops actually have horizontally-polarized antennas. I really don't know if that's true or not. It might be the case with PCMCIA wifi adapters with their cruddy little 2dBi antennas. I wonder what the approximate specs are on the "antennas" that are built into people's laptops.
Depends on the laptop manafacture, most of the ones we get in for repair have etched antennas on pc boards that are mounted horizontal by the display hinges , "my seat of the pants" tests show that horz works a little better for my bench AP that I use for repairs and my only horz ap I have active in the feild I have had people call and say they can get a signal up to a mile away at times but timing and other problems interfere then..
Reed
therealboss
04-03-2007, 01:39 PM
I find horizontal works much better with a laptop, on the same topic have you ever used a Pac Wireless Roo on its side (horizontal)??
I use Pac Wireless roos in horizontal configuration all the time, but not with anything having to do with laptops.
Pac Wireless rootennas work great turned sideways for horizontal polarization, in fact that is primarily how I use them as most of my APs are horizontally polarized.
therealboss
04-03-2007, 02:06 PM
TOG
What do you use for your AP antennas?
Almost always the 13dBi HPOL omni when an omni is called for:
http://www.pacwireless.com/products/omni.shtml
I also use rootennas themselves as access points or the equivalent PA24-13 panel antenna because they happen to be good "sector panels" for my long/narrow landmass.
go.fast
04-03-2007, 02:33 PM
Ditto Tog, what you said.
Did you know that ac has a combo A/G rootenna, it's a couple db less gain, but the beamwidth is a little wider than the typical rootenna.
Yeah I saw it, but I would rather stick to a normal specialized antenna.
kbldawg
04-03-2007, 03:35 PM
We have serveral H-POL Sectors (95*), and my laptop will RX as them just as well as our V-POLs. (1-2 Miles)
I don't think you'll have a problem.
Thanks. I will definitely use some 120 degree HPOL sectors for this marina then. I'm still on the fence whether or not to setup two sectors in diversity or not for each AP.