Defense Articles

If you were around in the mid 70s in the United States you’d have to have been living under a rock not to know about the great citizen band radio craze made popular by the smash hit “Convoy” by C.W. McCall. If you were into citizen band radio at all you knew that there was a certain prestige to having certain kinds of antennas, especially if you had a CB setup in your home.

For the mobile units, the ones that were installed in your motor vehicle, the antennas were rather simple and relatively weak. They could only send and receive a short distance depending on the time of day. In the afternoon, mobile CB antennas were lucky to reach a few miles, especially during sun spot time. At night, if you were lucky you could reach about 10 to 20 miles, maybe sometimes a little more.

Mobile antennas came in several types. One of the most popular antennas was the fiberglass model that hooked on the back bumper. These antennas were very good transmitters and receivers. Most were about 3/8 of an inch in diameter and about 2 feet tall. Some could handle up to 1000 watts of transmission power.

Another popular type of Mobile Antenna was the magnetic roof top antenna. These were not very powerful but they were real easy to hook up. Just pop the cable into your CB, which was installed usually under the dashboard in your car, and then just take the antenna, stick it out your window and pop it on your roof top. The magnet was strong enough that there would have to be a hurricane for that thing to blow off. These antennas could handle about 300 watts of power which made them a pretty low end antenna for CB use, but they were also very cheap.

Then we have the center load mirror mount antennas. The most popular of these were the Cobras. Don’t let these small things fool you. They could handle up to 3000 watts of power, usually made of 24 carat gold-plated 8-gauge copper coil. These antennas were also very expensive and today go for as much as $60 or more.

Of course one of the most common mobile antennas were the trunk mount CB antennas. These were very good antennas mostly because of the center placement on the vehicle towards the front of the trunk just before the back window. These antennas were not very expensive but usually were able to handle about 500 watts and because of their good ground, were very good for sending and receiving, even with a mobile unit that wasn’t that powerful. A good trunk mount antenna wouldn’t cost you more than $35.

There were some other odd brands of antennas but for the most part, these were the most common. They were relatively easy to hook up. In some cases, some drilling was required through parts of the vehicle to run antenna wire but for the most part anybody could put one of these things together.

The wifi technology has proved to be of great use and has stood on the expectations of the users. It is the wifi antenna power that is considered to be the most important aspect in the area of development of the wifi technology. It is possible to extend the given range of the wi-fi system (currently running 802.11 IEEE standard) by installing and configuring an external antenna, and it is logical that with more range more mobility can be provided to the user.

There are various types and kind of antennas available in the market, for choosing the appropriate one we have to first analyze all our requirements. We should judge our needs and whichever antenna satisfies the requirements should be taken. If the requirement is to have a better mobility of the system then the directional antennas should be taken. It is widely used in point to point transmission.

There is a second type of antenna available in the market; these are called omni directional power antennas. When an antenna transmits waves, they are propagated in all directions. Hence these antennas can serve as a base antennas, can transmit the data to various nodes in the network like wireless printers, laptops, PDA, etc. These antennas have some shortcomings too. These bi-directional antennas cannot be used in point to point transmission.

There is a third category of antennas, which can be used in multi cast communication, in other words in order to have data transmission between a point and multi points, point to multi-point WiFi antenna power options are available. It is very useful when we try to establish and share wireless local area network or try to establish a high speed internet connection. It is also applicable in the set up of wireless access points.

Knowing and understanding the qualities that are needed for an efficient and properly working network and requirements of our system is very crucial for choosing the right kind of antennas. Choosing the right type of power antennas can help in utilizing the facility of wifi network of the system.

If someone does not understand the whole technicality of the wireless networks, and its requirement, it is advisable to get in touch of the concerned technicians before buying any type of antennas.

Just knowing the range offered by a particular antenna is not the only condition which be taken care of. In other words there are different factors also which must be considered, in order to calculate the total range of he antenna, these factors are the power output of the wireless network interface card, and also the strength of the receiving wireless card (the card of the destination node). These factors play an important role to determine the effective range of the antennas.