Need advice with antenna selection for Xbee home/office automation project.

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1

I have recently placed a few Xbees around the house (and intend to also place some in an industrial environment).

I am now trying to determine the best antenna(s) to use for these tasks.

I was thinking of connecting the coordinator to an 18dbi yagi located in the corner of the house.

However it would also possible that I could do an omni-direction antenna in the center of the house.

Would a full-wave "wifi" antenna work better than a half-wave or quarter-wave antenna?

I'm assuming that if communication between distant nodes becomes an issue then by adding a few routers every here and there should help?

Can I use any type of amplifier or multiple-antenna splitter?

Thanks!

2

A high gain antenna is very directional and bulky - given sufficient power levels you want an omni such as a 1/4 wave..

regards

Allan

3

megaBlocks:
I have recently placed a few Xbees around the house (and intend to also place some in an industrial environment).

I am now trying to determine the best antenna(s) to use for these tasks.

I was thinking of connecting the coordinator to an 18dbi yagi located in the corner of the house.

If your Xbees are already running at the legal power limit for you part of the world (quite possible) then whilst you can use a yagi like that to increase reception range, if your transmitting through it your putting out some 60 times more power than you should.

The other issue with such a high gain antenna is that it will be highly directional, outside of a few degrees in the direction its pointing, stations either side might hear nothing.

If you need to increase gain\power on the Xbees by such a large margin, are the the right tool for the job ?

4

Which Xbees, what power are they transmitting at, which waveband, how big is the house,
does it have metal in the floors/walls (such as reinforced concrete), and what industrial
environment.

A range a few tens of meters shouldn't be any problem even with a broken antenna!
Highly directional antennas are suitable for point-to-point long-haul only.