Long range Wifi

[Franck]

Is there any official news or information about long range wifi. I learned from 2 different source working at the same large phone company in 2 completely different subdivision about Wifi link up to 30 km between nodes serving 300 mbps to 1gbps connection in a 4 km range around those nodes so no more need for 24/22 gage copper wire ou fiber. I just can't grasp how the Upload from the client works as these distance you technically need a large power antenna. I can't find anything about this technology. I have seen photos of these 360 degree antennas node and they are quite large it looked about 6 feet tall. I guess it must be in trial somewhere else as well. All i know is their test project has been running for since at least last summer. so it's not exactly something new.

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can do point to point links of that distance easily, and some will use wifi for the signaling. They do it with large antennas.

 

Look at something like this https://www.ui.com/airmax/nanobeam-ac-gen2/

[akio123008]

Well for wifi over 30km at a decent speed you will need a directional antenna, 360 degree is never going to work, unless you use some low frequency band like 900MHz but then it's technically not wifi.

 

Are you perhaps talking about "point to point" wifi setups? In these systems, both sides (client and AP) are a directional transceiver (like a dish or a panel antenna) pointed at each other. Such systems are used to provide internet access in areas where wired connections aren't an option. The client side transceiver acts like a modem of sorts and a customer would wire their devices up to it.

[Franck]

27 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

Well for wifi over 30km at a decent speed you will need a directional antenna, 360 degree is never going to work, unless you use some low frequency band like 900MHz but then it's technically not wifi.

 

Are you perhaps talking about "point to point" wifi setups? In these systems, both sides (client and AP) are a directional transceiver (like a dish or a panel antenna) pointed at each other. Such systems are used to provide internet access in areas where wired connections aren't an option. The client side transceiver acts like a modem of sorts and a customer would wire their devices up to it.

they have those wide range antenna that have quite a lot of give. I heard a couple degree to allow bidirectional communication between the 2 nodes 30km apart So i am pretty sure those are directional. Then at those same location there is these 6 feet tall secondary 360 degree antenna that deserve up to 4 km all around to the clients (home in these city test case) with each their own receiver device.

 

They apparently do not require a landline in the house for the upload but it makes no sense. At 4km how a normal home antenna is surely not strong enough to send back to the main hub 4 km away ? it has to be a directional antenna on the client side as far as i can imagine. The people i know neither of them had the client receiver in their hand. One work on the main hub downtown and the other was managing the signal stability for a couple weeks.

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 minutes ago, Franck said:

they have those wide range antenna that have quite a lot of give. I heard a couple degree to allow bidirectional communication between the 2 nodes 30km apart So i am pretty sure those are directional. Then at those same location there is these 6 feet tall secondary 360 degree antenna that deserve up to 4 km all around to the clients (home in these city test case) with each their own receiver device.

 

They apparently do not require a landline in the house for the upload but it makes no sense. At 4km how a normal home antenna is surely not strong enough to send back to the main hub 4 km away ? it has to be a directional antenna on the client side as far as i can imagine. The people i know neither of them had the client receiver in their hand. One work on the main hub downtown and the other was managing the signal stability for a couple weeks.

I think your talking about a wisp. Look up wisp equipment.

 

 

[akio123008]

14 minutes ago, Franck said:

They apparently do not require a landline in the house for the upload but it makes no sense. At 4km how a normal home antenna is surely not strong enough to send back to the main hub 4 km away ? it has to be a directional antenna on the client side as far as i can imagine. The people i know neither of them had the client receiver in their hand. One work on the main hub downtown and the other was managing the signal stability for a couple weeks.

Are you sure about that? AFAIK there's always some directional client device involved, though they don't have to be bulky or obvious; they can be very subtle and compact, so there's a chance you haven't noticed them.

 

There's absolutely no way you can just connect to the wireless network with a phone or something like that. Like you said, any signal it'd send would never make it to the base station, and also, there's a good chance a normal wifi device won't even pick up the signal because directionality is also important for reception. 

[Franck]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I think your talking about a wisp. Look up wisp equipment.

 

 

that's sounds alot like it. They also feed 4k tv signal over the same band and that bandwidth of max 60 gbps make much more sense.

And range up to 5km also match

[Bombastinator]

My memory is that kind of range requires 4 extremely directional antennas.  2 for each side, and also requires a big amplifier which takes it over legal maximum fcc requirements for unlicensed transmission.  WiFi is just radio.  Making radio go 30km (or even all the way around the world with amplitude modulation) has been done for a hundred years.  The issue is a WiFi base station is an unlicensed radio broadcasting device.  It IS legal to broadcast radio without a license, but there is a very low maximum output so it doesn’t go very far.  Get a license from the FCC and you can legally use more juice.  HAM radio operators have been doing this for years with packet radio.  More modern WiFi might require 8 or 16 separate antennas.  You need a seperat antenna for each side of each system.  A WiFi system that uses multiple frequencies would need 4 antennas for each frequency.  They would also look different as each frequency might require a different antenna shape.  Not always.  It used to be there was a thing called a cantenna which was made out of threaded rod, washers, and a Pringle’s can that could do a good half kilometer.  You only needed two of those.  They did both sending and receiving and handled multiple frequencies.  You had to point one at the other with a scope though.