I bought an inexpensive Chinese antenna to enhance mobile communications. Now I even have 4G internet in my dacha!
I think for many who live far out of town or come to rest at their dacha, the situation is familiar when their phone is not in the network coverage area. And in order to catch at least some signal, you have to go from place to place in search of it. For example, in order to catch a mobile network, I had to climb into the attic (sometimes the connection was caught in the house, but it was not stable and it was simply impossible to talk).
To remedy this situation and bring some comfort to my life, I thought about installing an antenna to enhance mobile communications. We have such kits are quite expensive, so first I decided to look at Aliexpress. After a short search, I found a suitable kit, for which there were many positive reviews. Its discounted price was only 3200 rubles, and I ordered it without hesitation. Delivery was very fast, and within a week I had the package. Who will be interested, write in the comments, I will throw off the link to the product.
The Chinese kit for enhancing mobile communications included an external (outdoor) antenna with mounts and a 10 m cable.
An internal antenna (somewhat similar to a mushroom cap) with a 2 m cable.
And a compact (10 x 8 cm) signal amplifier with a standard 5 V power supply.
Judging by the instructions, which came in handy in Russian, it was very easy to install this entire system.
I started the installation with an external antenna, I decided to fix it on a pipe that was already installed near my house. Everything went a little out of plan here, as the standard mounts were very small for such a pipe. Therefore, I had to temporarily fix it with ordinary ties.
At this stage, the most important thing was to position the antenna in the right direction. Surprisingly, I did not find the location of cell towers on the Internet, so I had to use a phone application that found the nearest towers and showed the direction to them.
Then I pulled the cable from the external antenna into the house and connected it to the amplifier on one side (BTS input), and on the other, I connected a second antenna (MS input). The internal antenna had a weird mount (I never figured out how to fix it to the ceiling), so for now I just put it on the floor.
Then it remains to connect the power supply to the amplifier and insert it into the outlet. After power-up, the amplifier's LED display illuminated to show the input signal level.
And lo and behold! Almost immediately all the sticks appeared on my phone. I have two SIM cards and they both showed a full signal. After walking around the house and the street a little, I found out that the signal perfectly picks up somewhere within a radius of 7 m from the internal antenna (at a greater distance the signal drops sharply) and this exceeded all my expectations.
But what struck me most was that one of the SIM cards had a high-speed 4G Internet icon. For the sake of interest, I measured its speed and could not believe my eyes, in my wilderness now there is a mobile Internet with a speed of 60 Mbps.
In the end, I was very pleased with my purchase. The antenna really works and if you also have communication problems, you can safely buy it. Just before buying, be sure to find out the frequency of your operator in order to choose the right antenna.