I have plugged in 5G router at my house and put it on the windowsill. The only obstacle between the router and 5G tower is a window and distance to 5G tower is 25m of open air.
Router`s signal strength shows 2-3 LEDs of 5 possible. Often falls down to 4G also with 2-3 LEDs of 5 possible.
Do you have any ideas how to improve signal stability?
Screenshot doesn’t show info about frequency bands used for 4G and 5G. Anyway, it seems that either tower antennae are completely overshooting your window (quite likely as there are rules about max signal strength in habitable areas) or antennae on tower are turned away from your place. In first case you could try to place Chateau higher in the building. In second case you could try to move chateau around the house (same floor) but odds to make signal better are slim.
Does opening the window help? Any fancy stuff on window (sun-blocking foil, space between glass filled with some gas) can greatly degrade radio signal.
BTW, also 4G signal is not exactly great, at that short distance it should be greater than -85dBm.
No sure specifically. But certainly line-on-sight to the tower doesn’t necessarily mean it’s pointed your direction. As suggested, you can adjust try moving the Chateau around, even if not in LOS to see what happens. The internal antenna is omni, so LOS to one tower may not always be ideal. If that’s not the only tower in area, it is totally possible a tower without LOS may be better.
You can use the “field test mode” on a smartphone to compare reading from same location. Android I believe either provide direct access to cell signal data or the’re app to read RSPQ/RSPQ which which you should be comparing first. On iPhone, you place a call to 3001#12345# using the Phone app – Google to learn more, but this seem to be a good summary: https://www.weboost.com/blog/how-to-access-iphone-field-test-mode.
Thank you for your replies.
I have tried different locations in my house (nearest corner to the tower, furthest corner and loft) but signal strength is the same, as well as outside of the house. The LOS tower is the only 5G tower in my region.
Taking a look to the map of 5G coverage of my Service Provider my house is located 25m to the east of the tower, between two parabolas but still in Excellent Coverage zone. May be external antenna can help me to increase the signal strength? BTW, comparing to my previous Huawei 4G router to Chateau 5G in 4G mode - the Huawei has better signal strength (5 of 5 LEDs) in any location of in house.
Changing LTE bands and NR bands of the LTE1 interface causes switching of router to 3G mode. So I have left them as default values.
And I have no 5G smartphone yet, so cant to run “field test mode” right now.
The problem of being “between the parabolas” is that both base station cells use exactly same frequencies and interfere each other, so whatever the signal strength, the signal quality will always be less than ideal. And you can’t do anything about it, using great external antennae doesn’t help either. Some modems perform a bit better in “noisy” conditions than others, finding them is not a trivial task.