Boosting signal in a house?

[nobius]

My parents' home is a death trap for cell phone signals. Outside for all carriers works great. Sprint and Verizon are very poor, alternating between 3G and nothing. T-Mobile works fine. Is there anything that can improve CDMA signals in a building?

[WiWavelength]

Go to a window and do this:

 

 

AJ

[bollar]

If they're on Sprint & have broadband, get them an Airave.

[nobius]

If they're on Sprint & have broadband, get them an Airave.

 

Wow I didn't know Sprint had something like that. Too bad they don't have broadband.

[Steven800]

There are other devices I believe that don't require broadband you just got to do a little bit of searching on google. I know that they have Wilson signal boosters for while in a car. Not sure about a house one but then I don't see why they wouldn't have one.

[jonathanm1978]

Check newegg, they have some boosters but run into a couple hundred bucks. Looked at them before I was given an airave.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[coloradosprings]

I have an Airave in my room. I called sprint and I got it for free with no monthly fees too, Its great and cover about 500 sq feet. all you need is "internet connection" and must be Ethernet from your router to Airave.

Edited October 18, 2012 by coloradosprings

[koiulpoi]

Bi-Directional Amplifier.

 

Sure, they tend to run $500+...

[nobius]

Thanks everyone!

[digiblur]

I have an Airave in my room. I called sprint and I got it for free with no monthly fees too, Its great and cover about 500 sq feet. all you need is "internet connection" and must be Ethernet from your router to Airave.

 

It also works just fine behind your router. I prefer to do my own network management and don't need a double NAT.

[boomerbubba]

There are other devices I believe that don't require broadband you just got to do a little bit of searching on google. I know that they have Wilson signal boosters for while in a car. Not sure about a house one but then I don't see why they wouldn't have one.

 

See also these other threads on that subject:

 

Signal Amplification - I want to install a booster at my house

 

Do cell boosters work?

 

Cell repeaters and LTE

[pii100]

Bi-Directional Amplifier.

 

Sure, they tend to run $500+...

My Wilson setup ran me just under 600 for everything and works great. I posted install photos and a parts list in one of the threads Boomer linked. I was in the same situation, good signal on my roof but almost none inside.

[pii100]

Found it. http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/881-signal-amplification-i-want-to-install-a-booster-at-my-house/page__view__findpost__p__18792

[boomerbubba]

The caveat about the Wilson products is that there is not yet any support for Sprint's LTE band. In a home installation, assuming you have WiFi there anyway, that might not be a problem.

[digiblur]

Very cool. Love the pics. How far you from the site you are boosting?

 

Sent from my C64 w/Epyx FastLoad cartridge

 

 

[pii100]

The tower is about a mile away. I am just below the rise of a hill in between us so I get poor coverage. A few feet up on my roof its not a problem. In fact on my roof I can get a RSSI of -76dBm on my phone.

[pii100]

Like Boomer said above this wont help me with LTE once it is deployed on my tower but I have a nice WiFi system at home and great internet at 6Mb down so I like doing the responsible thing and offload to WiFi when I am at home.

[digiblur]

The tower is about a mile away. I am just below the rise of a hill in between us so I get poor coverage. A few feet up on my roof its not a problem. In fact on my roof I can get a RSSI of -76dBm on my phone.

 

Yeah, your scenario would work great. I had one of those ZBoost things before they came out with the Airave in 2008. I even had the outdoor directional panel antenna 30 foot in the air on my OTA mast. It worked ok, but only in that one room. I did get a little more boost out of it after mounting the panel antenna on the focal point of a 20 inch parabolic pointed at the tower. Did pretty well then. I get around -101 in the house and -95 outside. I'm sure it's worse now with the e-glass windows I have now.

 

At typical booster scenario really isn't about boosting the signal but just "moving" the signal inside and make it equal to outside.

 

Might have to break out the booster again and play around as I have a 90cm dish I can toy with to see what kind of gain I can get.

[pii100]

Digi you may want to concentrate you efforts on the indoor antenna if you got good signal in the same room it was in. Too much gain on the antenna facing the tower will kick in the receiver overload protection in the amp.