Wawelength
Wave Velocity
Related pages
Wavelength Frequency Formula
Building an antenna
I used this calculator to build a dipole antenna for the CDMA 450 network operated by Ice.net / Net1 in Scandinavia. Radio signal reception is poor in general in the area where I live. I bought a commercial Yagi antenna (from Ice.net) to boost the Internet connection provided by the CDMA 450 network.
Poor EvDO signal
The antenna was placed 5m above the roof top. Best reception from the base stations in the area (the nearest is about 10km away) by the directional antenna was about 0.5 Mbps down (mostly a lot less) and 0.15 Mbps up. The quality of the connection was so poor, it was impossible to run many popular applications e.g. Skype (pinging google.com >350ms). AccessManager: EvDO Signal -86dBm; EvDO 2nd Signal -93dBm.
Don't waste your time on Ice.net
I contacted Ice.net to get technical support. Let's be honest, the support at Ice.net stinks. None of the suggestions I got were neither competent nor any useful. I almost gave up on Ice.net. As a last attempt to improve performance, I decided to try an omni-directional antenna. My first attempt was 1/2 wave vertical dipole. It took me 11 minutes to make from a 10mm aluminum pipe found i my shead.
A miracle happened
After connecting the antenna to the Axesstel MV440 EV-DO gateway provided by Ice.net (as D-35 Modem) a miracle happened. Connection quality was significantly improved - pinging google.com <95ms. Download speed increased to 2.25Mbps (best 2.8Mbps) and upload speed to 0.65Mbps (best 0.8Mbps) - with my new antenna placed in the window. AccessManager: EvDO Signal -82dBm; EvDO 2nd Signal -86dBm.