Passive repeaters for police radios are regularly used in side large buildings. They work. Your main concern would be the loss in the cable, if it's long. But try it! For the first experiment, the upper antenna need not be directional.
passive mobile phone repeater
Aug 15, 2004
2 Replies
Asking mostly out of curiosity on this one. Some friends of mine live in a place in the mountains in Southern Spain. They can receive mobile phone calls a few hundred yards from their house, on the top of a small rise, but not further down where they are living. I was wondering when I was out there to visit whether it would be possible to make a passive repeater by putting up a large highly directional antenna on the hill pointing at the mobile phone mast (there's an old power pylon which would do to mount it on), and then connect it with coax to a smaller antenna by the house. Would this work, or would you need some kind of active circuitry?
http://www.niftybits.ukfsn.org/
remove 'n-u-l-l' to email me. html mail or attachments will go in the spam
bin unless notified with [html] or [attachment] in the subject line.
Hi,
That is one of the classic methods of 'repeating' a signal if there is enough of it. It was used years ago (in Cornwall, I think) to feed TV signals to a village at the bottom of a cliff and seem to remember it as a news item in one of the journals at the time. Another possibility is a large reflecting sheet suitably angled. While in Oman a few years ago, I tried to get one of the locals to try this from the top of a Wadi near his home but he never got around to it. If you were to use active circuitry by the way, it would have to be bilateral which means that during quiet periods you might be transmitting noise on the BTS input frequency which is a no-no. Cheers - Joe
Join the Discussion
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Didn't find your answer?
Ask the community — no account required