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With plenty of coverage in the news about 5G hardware at the moment, the debate about cost effectiveness versus quality is as lively as ever. At GTT Wireless, we are the first to admit that our solutions are not the lowest-cost in the market. There is always the nagging-doubt that if you opt for the lowest cost solution, you sacrifice quality as well as cost effectiveness, as the antenna’s working life may be significantly reduced, and the total cost of ownership higher due to on-site repairs, maintenance and downtime. Furthermore, many 5G antenna manufacturers cannot meet consistent high-performance levels across their advertised frequency range, even if the equipment works reliably on a mechanical level.
In this article, we briefly explain why it is more cost-effective to invest a bit more into your 5G hardware and discuss the ways in which we feel our 5G antenna range is superior to other, lower-cost versions.
Professional Antenna companies will all agree that Antenna Efficiency is essential for high-speed video downloads and real-time streaming, as well as high-capacity MIMO networks for public transportation. So, how do you assess the quality of the product, given that all 5G antenna look the same at first sight – with a similar frequency range and the same antenna connector? Here are the criteria we use to make a judgement:
How efficient is the antenna for high-speed streaming and high-capacity applications? For many high-frequency antenna on the market (5GHz plus), the advertised efficiency is frequently only 50%, which isn’t very high, and for lower frequencies (3.3 GHz to 4.6 GHz), the efficiency is even lower. Most competitors antenna are only ‘highly efficient’ within a small frequency range – e.g. LTE (689 kHz to 824 kHz), which is a tiny segment of the full 600 MHz to 6000 MHz frequency spectrum theoretically covered by the 5G antenna.
When antenna are designed with the application in mind; for high-quality antenna, this equation is reversed. For instance, our GTT antenna efficiency is 60% + between 1800 MHz and 5800 MHz, (and between 652 MHz and 663 MHz), only falling below 50% on the small frequency band between 800 MHz and 960 MHz. For the most popular 1710 – 1805 MHz frequencies in the UK, Europe and the USA, our antenna have a minimum efficiency of 70%, and often exceed this. All our antenna are also a Dipole design (and are ground-plane independent).
Note that the important criteria is ‘average’ gain and not ‘peak’ gain. Peak gain is only of benefit in one particular direction from the antenna. For applications requiring omnidirectional antenna – i.e. those with 360° 3D coverage – average gain is a better indication of performance. The peak gain of an antenna is only achieved in a very narrow specific direction.
Further, many 5G antenna only exceed 2dBi peak gain within a narrow frequency band in a specific direction – in this example 689 kHz to 824 kHz. A good quality omnidirectional antenna should perform consistently better than – 2dBi average gain across most frequency bands (which ours does – specifically between 652 and 663 MHz, and then all frequency bands between 1805 MHz and 5800 MHz). So in summary, good average gain in all directions across most parts of the 5G frequency spectrum makes the performance of our 5G antenna significantly better than the best in class performance of many of our competitor’s products.
Finally, thought should be given to compatibility with older cellular bands, in order to provide the highest efficiency for 5G devices using access points, routers and terminals designed for 2G, 3G, and 4G networks.
In summary, there are three great things about our 5G antenna:
5G is a big advance on 4G and other wireless networks, giving faster connectivity and higher download speeds – and with valuable applications for both consumers and businesses. However, 5G is a new technology, and a lot of claims manufacturers make about their antenna sound too good to be true. If so, they probably are. We strongly recommend a careful assessment of each antenna option in terms of suitability for your application and consistency and performance – claims which must be backed up by field data against their document specifications.
To find out more about our solutions and to discuss the advantages of high quality 5G for your application, as well as what you should realistically expect to pay for the performance criteria you need, please call 01572 338011 today.
Image Source – Pixabay
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