How does it work?
For wireless local area networks, antennas are very important (WLAN). They make it possible for us to use the internet, watch movies online, work from home, and play video games without wires. They also affect the strength and range of the signal.
Choosing the right antenna is an important step if you want to improve your signal, replace your WiFi antennas, or set up a long-range wireless network.
How do antennas for WiFi work?
Radio waves let devices that don’t have wires talk to each other. These wireless signals send information through electromagnetic waves (EM waves). WiFi antennas turn EM waves into electrical signals and electrical signals into EM waves.
Wireless routers, smartphones, laptops, tablets, and hotspots have antennas that can receive and send signals. The receiving antennas pick up the EM waves carrying packets of information, which turn them into electrical signals that the device can understand. But to send the information packets, the transmitting antennas change the electrical signals into EM waves.
How WiFi Antennas Differ?
WiFi antennas come in two main types: omnidirectional and directional.
Omnidirectional Antennas:
These antennas send signals in all directions to reach the most people. Think of an omnidirectional antenna as a lightbulb with no shape. Turning on the light bulb will send out light evenly in all directions, lighting up the whole room. The antennas on the Tenda RX9 Pro are an example.
Most of the time, an omnidirectional antenna has a shorter range than a directional antenna, but it can cover a much larger area. So, the light from the lightbulb won’t go as far as it would with a directional antenna, but it can still light up a whole room. You can find omni antennas both inside and outside.
Types of omnidirectional WiFi antennas:
- When you’re outside, outdoor Omni Antennas make the WiFi signal stronger. Most of the time, they are connected to a router, an access point, or an outdoor access point to improve wireless coverage outside.
- Ceiling Dome Antennas are put on the ceiling of a home, office building, or warehouse and connected to a WiFi router or access point with a coaxial cable.
- Rubber Duck Antennas, also called Dipole Antennas, are usually found on routers, access points, and WiFi USB adapters. Check out the antennas on the back of the Tenda WiFi 4G+ LTE AC1200 Dual-Band Router.
Directional Antennas:
As the name suggests, directional antennas send all of their power in one direction. A directional antenna is like a flashlight in how it works. When you turn on a flashlight, it shines light on the area you want to see. The flashlight’s beamwidth, or pattern of light, is in the shape of a triangle. Anything outside of this triangle doesn’t get any light.
Since the antenna’s power is more concentrated, they can send and receive wireless signals from farther away, but only in a much smaller area. An exmaple is, the light can reach beyond one room, but it won’t light up an entire room. Long-range point-to-point WiFi networks often use directional WiFi antennas to connect the internet between two building structures. Alternatively, they can be used for long-range point-to-multipoint WiFi networks in which more than one directional antenna connects to an omnidirectional antenna.
Types of directional WiFi antennas:
- Yagi antennas are the most common type of directional antenna. The shape of most Yagi antennas is like an arrow. To work, they must point in the direction of the signal they are sending or receiving. A typical Yagi antenna has a 45-degree pattern of how it sends out radio waves.
- Mini-Panel Antennas: Low-profile antennas that send and receive radio waves. These antennas usually improve WiFi inside. Rubber duck antennas could be used on routers, access points, and WiFi USB adapters. Aim the antenna where you want to send and receive signals to fix connectivity issues. These antennas broadcast in a 60-degree pattern.
- Panel antennas are robust, long-range antennas. They can be connected to a network or USB WiFi adapter to deliver or receive data. Mini panel antennas feature a broader radiation pattern than panel antennas. Tenda 5GHZ 16dBi 11ac Outdoor CPE antennas can be flat or paraboloidal.
- Parabolic Grid Antennas are high gain and focused. Usually, their beamwidth is 3 to 20 degrees. Due to this, parabolic antennas can send and receive signals from miles away, making them ideal for WiFi point-to-point networks. By design, they can withstand adverse weather.
- “CPE” means “Customer Premise Equipment.” They might be flat or dish-shaped. They can construct point-to-point networks and deliver wireless signals far. 12 and 6.5 miles are the ranges of our CPE antennas. CPE antennae can be inside and outside to provide WiFi in barns, rural regions, and surveillance cameras far from the main network. 5GHz 23dBi 11AC Outdoor CPE.
