I would welcome a purchase recommendation. We need LTE/4G hardware to cover our sports events in an outdoor areas such as small city squares where the only 4G/LTE is available (we’re located in Central Europe).
I am looking for a weatherproof outdoor unit solution with adequate wifi coverage and performance, i.e. a routerboard with sim card slot + high gain antenna, or one-device combo of both.
I was able to pinpoint the following devices, but not sure which are ideal for this purpose:
mANT 19 S is not for LTE
Instead wAP, LtAP is better for external antennas.
SXT and LHG I never used it, but I suppose that LHG can connects with longer distances than SXT.
Hello,
Thanks for your response.
I probably need to make myself more clear. I am looking for an adequate WiFi coverage to cover area of around 500m2 (a town square). I am not looking to amplify/extend 4G/LTE signal.
Therefore, ideally I’d need a 4g modem + high gain omnidirectional wifi antenna combo in a weatherproof package.
If you’re covering a large area, I would suggest you consider 2.4GHz as well as 5GHz. The mANT 19S will give you some great 5GHz coverage over its 120° arc. You can see the antenna patterns here, however if you’re covering a square area, you have to consider the edges of the space. If you place your main 5GHz sector radiator in the center up high, then you have weaker coverage as the distance between the AP and client increases. Center placement would make for centralised, easier management of all the hardware. You need to plan where the highest concentration of clients will be. With 120° sector antennas, you would need 3 to cover 360°.
Another consideration for 5GHz is going to be DFS. If you deploy the AP’s in observance of DFS regulatory domains, radar signals may force the AP’s to stop radiating while they back off the channel and scan for 10 minutes, or simply switch frequencies.
You need to do some coverage planning for your signal black spots. If you wanted to go full 5GHz for the space, then consider four of those sector antennas for each corner of the space, and then plan for added capacity in the center of the zone with omnidirectional antennas. 5GHz isn’t the best due to signal attenuation, so 2.4GHz would still serve you better. Have a look at the mANTBox 2 12s. Also consider if you really need clients at the edge of the space to be able to connect. Most likely you’re looking at mounting all your equipment in the center of the space at a high elevation (4-5 meters) if you go with the sector antennas.
High output power on the AP’s doesn’t always translate to better coverage as the client devices need to able to transmit at a much higher power to send a signal back at further distances. Have you looked at the Groove/Metal series? I have deployed a few RBMetalG-52SHPacn and can vouch for their high output power (SHP in the model name stands for super high power). They’re also weatherproof, sealed units with decent omni antennas.
The Basebox 5 does have good Tx power, and a SIM slot so you can add the 4G card in the second slot and connect both your mANT LTE 5o and sector antenna to it. It’s a bit DIY but I see no issue with that.
For a 4G solution, I would suggest you go with the LtAP LTE6 and the mANT LTE 5o, mounted high and positioned towards the cell tower.
You’ll need 2 x ACSMAUFL and 2 x SMASMA (or skip this if you have a longer male-to-male SMA coax cable, accounting for signal loss with length) for the 5o antenna to work on the LtAP.
That is an excellent and informative response. Thank you very much!
Meanwhile, I have reached out to Mikrotik sales team, and I will share their recommendation here.
Thank you for your interest in our products!
wAP ac LTE kit should be able to cover 500m2 if placed in center. Our general recommendation is to have up to 30 concurrent users per wireless interface. It is not possible to attach external wifi antennas on wAP ac LTE kit, thus I`d also recommend to consider NetMetal ac2 + R11e-LTE(LTE6) + HGO-antenna + LTE antenna
Based on this, we've ordered NetMetal ac2 + R11e-LTE6, 2x HGO Antenna + 1x mANT LTE 5o LTE Antenna and the cables you mentioned. Not sure about the HGO antennas though, they seem silly and flimsy with relatively small gain, but we'll see. The netmetal looks apocalypse ready plus I had funny feeling that wAP just won't cut it.
Ok, sorry. I’m not sure if BaseBox works correctly with Mikrotik LTE modules. I saw some time ago that some users had problems with it.
On the best case, you can use:
For 5Ghz: BaseBox 5, NetBox 5 or NetMetal AC2 + UBNT AMO-5G13
For 2.4Ghz: BaseBox 2 or NetMetal AC2 + UBNT AMO-2G13
To attach UBNT antenna with Mikrotik radios, You should add a RF Elements EB912 bracket.
To your wireless radio attach a LTE module that are compatible the band that you need to use. Don’t forget add 2x ACSMAUFL and 2x SMASMA + 1x mANT LTE 5o.
If you need more gain on the LTE antenna, you can use a L-COM DAS sector antenna (HG72710XP-065). It is better than Mikrotik LTE antenna but it uses N connectors. You should change these cables for another compatible ones.
No problem. Keep in mind that my recommendation factored in a client saturation of at least 50 clients per 120° arc (rough estimation).
I haven’t tested the NetMetal series but let me know how the ac² performs as well as the HGO antennas. I’m skeptical of their coverage.
You’ll need to pop two of those antenna holes to fit the ACSMAUFL jacks, then run your SMASMA cables through to the 5o antenna.
On a personal note, I love that I can disassemble MikroTik devices, get hands on and then reassemble them for purpose.
Yes, that’s exactly the way how I added the HGO antenna connectors. OK, so after one event I can say that the 2.4Ghz coverage with the HGO antennas was abysmal (no wonder, it says 3.3 dBi gain on the description), but 5Ghz was fine. I have not experienced anything wrong with the netmetal itself, apart from slow LTE speed (probably given by the tower and or location). We’ve experienced occasional intermittent signal dropouts on our devices for a few seconds. Can this be radar/DFS as you mentioned above?
We’re going to have another event this weekend at a larger town square and if this setup proves to be too weak, I’ll ditch the HGOs and switch to mANT 15 or 19s and just go with 5Ghz only.