Decided to fool around with antenna placements...Opinions?!

[willyburz]

Have an Asus AC3200, any opinions between all straight up, or half moon, etc?!

 

[NightOwl326]

Have an Asus AC3200, any opinions between all straight up, or half moon, etc?!

Not that will make any real difference.

 

[wouterv]

I suggest oval, with a little wave shape...
How much choice is there?
It depends in theory of the location of your clients and their antenna orientation: the router antenna and the client antenna shall (in theory) be lined up like this: | |
Does that help you? Do you know the orientation of the antennas in your laptop, or in your tablet..and are they allways the same?

 

[RMerlin]

Depends on location and your house layout. There's no one-size-fit-all position that can be recommended.

 

[Nullity]

There is a neat Android app called "WiFi Solver FDTD" that shows how radios waves will act in simple scenerios.

Aside from that just realize that the WiFi signal radiates omnidirectionally from the antenna, meaning the signal area is shaped like a donut. So, align the donut most efficiently. A friend of mine thought the best way to align the omnidirectional antennas was to point them directly at the device... wrong, that is literally the worst way.

Trial & error is king though.

 

[NightOwl326]

Depends on location and your house layout. There's no one-size-fit-all position that can be recommended.

And radio waves bouncing all over the place so antenna position other than the 2 most common would net very little gain.

 

[jerry6]

Have an Asus AC3200, any opinions between all straight up, or half moon, etc?!

no idea but if you ever figure it out let us know . Do you have an idea which antenna corresponds with each radio ?

 

[sfx2000]

Shouldn't make that much of a difference to be honest as one will get quite a few multiple path reflections...

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One can always try \ | | /

 

[pete y testing]

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i have seen manufactures recommend this way but im never sure why as you have suggested the orientation of the antennas makes very little difference these days as beam forming takes a greater roll in connectivity to the client

half the time the antenna tend to fall over here and it works just the same at the other end of the house still ( or at least with no noticeable effect )

pre beamforming with mimo i guess it had a greater effect and is why ppl believe it will have as much effect now , would be interesting if someone actually spent the time and effort in testing but it would be a massive amount of work for what we would suspect would be little reward

 

[Nullity]

i have seen manufactures recommend this way but im never sure why as you have suggested the orientation of the antennas makes very little difference these days as beam forming takes a greater roll in connectivity to the client

half the time the antenna tend to fall over here and it works just the same at the other end of the house still ( or at least with no noticeable effect )

pre beamforming with mimo i guess it had a greater effect and is why ppl believe it will have as much effect now , would be interesting if someone actually spent the time and effort in testing but it would be a massive amount of work for what we would suspect would be little reward

I think the 2 diagonal antennas are intended help mix up the polarity.

http://www.theruckusroom.net/2011/06/a-polarizing-problem.html

 

[pete y testing]

I think the 2 diagonal antennas are intended help mix up the polarity.

http://www.theruckusroom.net/2011/06/a-polarizing-problem.html

yup great theory prior to the uptake of beam forming , the blog was posted in June 26, 2011 where mimo was the only thing we had and polarizing was more important , it is my understanding that beam forming or steering is calculated regardless of or irrespective of the orientation of the antenna array and constantly adjusts as the clients move about thus making the polarization far less relevant


of course this depends on the type of beam forming used and if the client is capable of active beamforming as well eg explicit or if the client is not and the router is using implicit beamforming as to the performance of the wifi over that of standard polarity of antenna

 

[wouterv]

With the tiny antennas, moving mobile devices and beam forming I believe antenna orientation is less important than router location in general.
Look at professional access point locations: in general you find one in every room, in the middle of the ceiling.
For home routers you shall properly plan the router location: preferably with free line of sight to the client devices, not near concrete and steel, not in a closet, not in that dusty corner under the sofa, not on top of your modem, not close to other electronics.

 

[sfx2000]

yup great theory prior to the uptake of beam forming , the blog was posted in June 26, 2011 where mimo was the only thing we had and polarizing was more important , it is my understanding that beam forming or steering is calculated regardless of or irrespective of the orientation of the antenna array and constantly adjusts as the clients move about thus making the polarization far less relevant

Beamforming happens at the baseband, not the antennae, let's be clear on that..

My preference, and recommendation is to leave them vertical - I can understand why some may want a bit of tilt, and this is to improve, however so slightly, performance with mobile handsets and laptops, as most folks don't use them vertical (most mobiles probably live 90 percent of their lifespan laying flat on a table somewhere, lol). And many laptops have antenna in the upper half, behind the panel, and I don't see many folks using their laptops with the screen vertical...

In any event, wifi bounces around fairly well inside the environment, and MIMO leverages into this in a big way, so not much benefit to tilting antennae one way or another...

 

[willyburz]

I had them all | | | | | |

Now I'm trying them \ \ | | / /

Just been messing with it to see any gain changes if any.

 

[Nullity]

I had them all | | | | | |

Now I'm trying them \ \ | | / /

Just been messing with it to see any gain changes if any.

I hope you paid attention to RMerlin's post.

Depends on location and your house layout. There's no one-size-fit-all position that can be recommended.

Just try anything and see what works. The 3d realm is too chaotic to be predefined.

 

[evh909]

If you dont have an andriod phone handy, you can try the ekahau heatmapper for windows (http://www.ekahau.com/wifidesign/ekahau-heatmapper) to generate coverage maps:

Basically I just made changes to the antenna positions and mapped the same 4 data points in a downstairs room where I was having some streaming issues. While the maps showed different coverage, I didnt really see any difference in actual throughput and hard for me to say if there where other variables that came into play, but basically just left them in the same position (RTAC68) as to what the documentation suggested.