How-To: Build a WiFi biquad dish antenna. Eliot Phillips. Using consumer WiFi gear we picked up over 18 APs in an area with only 1 house per square mile. Jul 19, 2014 In this section, we’re going to discuss how to increase WiFi range using the right antenna for the job. We’ll discuss various antenna types, how they work, cable lengths, and coupling requirements.
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Biquad
Biquad antenna is also known as Double Quad Beam or some call it Bowtie Beam antenna (Bowtie Beam is also the name for the subtype of the Biconical antenna). It is widely used because of its properties:
- Compact and thus can be portable,
- Easy to make,
- Cheap,
- Only one radiating element and reflector,
- 11dBi gain,
- SWR as low as 1.05 if made ideally,
- 50Ω impedance,
- Equal radiation pattern in horizontal and vertical planes,
- Good bandwidth, better than Yagi.
Dimensions of the reflector are not crucial. By Trevor Marshal, it should be .9 x .9 of the wavelength, but it was discovered that 1.2 x 1.6 wavelengths gives the largest gain. In the table we will list both values (the larger reflector will give us less than 1dBi gain over the smaller one). Distance of radiating element from reflector is from the center of the wire.
![Caseras Caseras](/uploads/1/2/7/2/127284548/450985177.jpg)
- w – Reflector width,
- h – Reflector height,
- x – Outer Side Length,
- y – Inner Side Length.
- All measurements are in mm.
Radiation pattern in Vertical and Horizontal plane. Image below: in 3D
Orientation and polarization are not intuitive as with Yagi antenna. See the image for proper orientation.
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