Lora Gateway - external antenna gain

RouterOS General
1

Hi,
We have a Lora 8 gateway with the official MikoTik Lora external antenna which has a 6.5 dBi gain.

Within the Lora device configuration / Antenna Gain section are we supposed to chnage eth fefault setting from 0 to 6.

I’m mainly asking as we seem to have a pretty poor range from the gateway, something just under 1 km where i was hoping for at least somewhere like 3 - 5 km in a fairly urban environment

Thanks

2

I am also having questions about external antennas!
with a 3.5dbi antenna what should I put on antenna gain?
(looks like it only accepts an 8 bit integer) “-128 to 127”

3

Correct.

Antenna gain isn’t everything.
It’s like in real estate: location, location, location!

So the following factors are important:

  1. height (higher → better)
  2. antenna cable length (shorter → better)
  3. outdoor vs. indoor (outdoor is better)
  4. line of sight or are there significant obstacles

Also keep in mind that the MikroTek 868 Omni antenna has a vertical beamwidth of 30 degrees.

4

Hello,
I’ve got a MikroTik LR8 LoRa gateway and expected the internal LoRa-antenna connected to the LoRa-module from factory. I played a little bit arround with it and while trying to connect the external antenna I saw that the internal antenna wasn’t connected all the time.
I have terrible range even with the external antenna and now I wonder, if the LoRa-module was damaged by using it without an antenna.
There was no warning on the packaging that the internal antenna is not connected from factory. Does the LoRa-Module has any protection from using it without an antenna or do you think it might be broken? Is there any way to check if the module is broken?

Kind regards
Jonas

5

Well explained. Thanks.