Boosting the Cellular Signal, Inside?

Ryan Black asks: "I live in a suburban area where cellular signal strength is not what it should be. I am a Verizon customer, and while they have been courteous in addressing the issue, they have not been able to fix the situation. Is it possible to create a sort of cellular repeater to attach to the roof of my house? The signal outside is acceptable, it just cannot penetrate the walls of the building."

Comments

two solutions

[austad]

There are a couple of ways you can go about it.

One way is to buy something called an active repeater. It has an amplifier, and can amplify signals both coming into and exiting the house. Do a search on google for gsm active repeater. I looked into this for one of my remote offices. Cost was around $1500, which is probably more than you want to spend for your house.

Another option is a passive repeater. Basically just an antenna outside, and another inside. No amplifier. However, I'm not fully sure how well these work. I purchased one which claimed it worked for my frequency, but it didn't do a damn thing. If you do this, make sure you buy from some place that looks reputable. Otherwise, there are antenna sites that tell you how to tune antennas to certain frequencies, and if you wanted to do some research, you could probably build your own.

In all reality, you could probably build your own active repeater also, and base it on the design of one of those cable tv amps that work with cable modems, they boost both ways. Of course, you'd have to spend like $80 and rip the thing apart and figure out how to change the range that it works in.

Re:two solutions

[Minupla]

Also be aware that doing some of these things may place you in violation of FCC type compiance rules if you do it yourself, without appropiate FCC licening and testing. I am unsure of the rules and regs outside the ham frequencies, but you might wanna look into, to ensure you're under whatever the max radiated power for the frequencies involved. Having said this, there is a fair bit of home brew info for both active and passive repeater systems available, and the theory on that stuff should point you in the right direction for handling the shorter wavelengths (higher freq) involved in gigahertz frequency work.

Similar problem.

[blues5150]

I use my cell phone as my primary phone. My problem is that the reception inside my house is poor. The signal outside is a lot better. I Googled this cell reception idea a bit. The best site I found was Cell Antenna. The also have another site called Boat Antenna. which specializes in providing signal boosters for boats. The hardware is pretty much the same on both sites.

Re:whos the dumbass...

[_Spirit]

My phone (Nokia 7110) has a jack for an external antenna, most phones sold here (Netherlands) do, mostly to be able to use an outside antenna on your car. When I put my phone into the handsfree kit, it automaticaly jacks into the external antenna as well. It would be trivial to set this up at home. You would lose the cordless functionality though. In my car I sit in the same spot all the time(well most of it, I do escape from traffic jams and actually arrive somewhere every once in a while ;-) ) and I am not allowed to hold the phone in my hands so the physical connection isn't an issue. At home I tend to walk around alot while I'm on the phone.

I am not sure if these external antenna kits are readily available in the US as I noticed the last time I was there that most people prefer to hold the phone in their hands. That's one of the differences I saw between Europe and the US. In Europe a driver is defined as the person driving the car. In the US the driver is considered to be the person who got into the seat that has the steering weel in front of it. Is there anything you guys don't do while driving ?