On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:48:12 +0100, Highland Ham wrote:

Beverly Erlebacher wrote:
Can you help me roughly CALCULATE how to increase the range of my home
Internet wireless WiFi setup to a shed 300 feet away from my house?

Presently, I can walk about half the way through the wooded area to the
shed with my laptop in hand before I lose the connection to the PCMCIA
802.11b,g Linksys card. Basically I need to gain 150 feet in "range".

But how?
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Having followed today's postings on this topic , I see that there is a
wooded area between your house and shed, hence there seems to be no free
line of sight between the house and the shed.
That's why it is difficult to calculate/predict the Gain you need to
penetrate the wooded area with a 2.4 GHz signal.

If you wish to use the laptop inside the shed at a fixed location it
MIGHT be good enough if you install a corner reflector yagi (High
Gain)antenna at both the house AND the shed. However then your laptop
needs a plug-in PCMCIA WiFi tansceiver with a connection for an external
antenna.
One of such units is the Make: Buffalo - Air Station Turbo G ,High Power
-unit which also has a built-in antenna.
Note : The coaxial cable between the 2 devices and their associated
antenna should be limited to only a few metres because of the high
frequency being 2.4GHz

Communication here is 2 way . Your laptop might receive the ( antenna
amplified) signal from your router located in the house ,but that does
not mean the router will receive the signal from the laptop without
additional facilities at the laptop.

Again , because of the probably partly obstructed path (wooded area) it
is difficult making any sensible calculations.

Frank GM0CSZ / KN6WH

Hi Highland Ham,

I see there are multiple solutions. Probably on the end of my list is
adding a wire to the laptop because then it wouldn't be wireless. Still,
it's an intriguing idea (I never knew laptops could have fixed antenna's
connected to them by wire).

If I do use two antennas, does that "add" the gain?

a) Antenna 1 transmits with a directional gain of, say 7 dBd
b) Antenna 2 receives with a directional gain of, say 7 dBd
c) Does that get me a 14 dBd overall gain?

Beverly