In this guide, we will show you how to choose a good antenna for your LoRa, LoRaWAN and Meshtastic devices to achieve longest range for your LoRaWAN devices.
1. Choose a correctly tune antenna
To choose correctly tuned antennas:
- Trusted vendors: From reputable vendors with correct and good VSWR.
- Good VSWR: In antenna technology, VSWR (Voltage Standing Wave Ratio) measures how efficiently radio frequency (RF) power is transferred from a source to an antenna, indicating the degree of impedance mismatch between the antenna and the transmission line
- Correct frequency: Either 915Mhz or 868Mhz or 923Mhz or 433Mhz or 470Mhz depending on your country regulation.
2. Choose a suitable gain
Antennas with different gains have different signal patterns and fit for different usecases
- Antennas with low gain (3dBi) are best fit for devices situated at a shorter distance in the same building, city neighborhood, town or village.
- Antennas with high gain (5+ dBi) are best fit for devices situated at a longer distance in the outskirts of areas.
Higher gain is not always better:
- Higher gain antennas have narrower patterns and likely to overshoot devices at near distance and low attitude.
- Higher gain antennas are not suitable to provide coverage for devices in a building.
3. Choose color of antennas
Best practices:
- In the north, black antennas are better, while in the south, white antennas are preferable.
- The antenna is exposed to sunlight. And black surfaces heat up more than white ones.
4. Choose extension cables with low signal loss
Best practices:
- The best choice: Put your gateways and nodes in high locations and do NOT use extension cable if possible.
- Second choice: It is recommended to use as short extension cable as possible.
- Third choice: It is recommended to use LMR400 cables LoRaWAN. LMR400 cables with 50Ohm have low signal loss and suitable for outdoor environment.
- Do not use RG-8 or RG-174 due to high signal attenuation.
- Avoid (if possible) to use adapters for connectors.
- Attennuation calculator: here
5. Choose correct cable connectors
Best practices:
- To use N-Type (if possible) to connect to your antenna. N-Type is in bigger shape and more durable.
- To use RP-SMA (if possible) to connect to your gateways and nodes. RP-SMA is smaller and more agile.
