Which antenna has the highest gain

In practice, the antenna's performance can be faulty if its impedance is different from that of the cable connected to it. Buying an antenna based on gain and price alone would be like going shopping for an automobile and only considering power and price. While high values of gain - in the 7 to decibel range - are usually better than low gain values, you would be better off not focusing on the gain, but instead purchasing an antenna that provides good overall performance, as long as it meets your reception and installation requirements.

For more information on what these requirements might be in your case, call or chat online with our Connection Crew. We can attempt to illustrate using the following two examples: A family in rural Nebraska would need a long-range, multi-directional antenna, a tower of about 60 feet -which is highly uncommon- and a preamplifier, in order to pick up stations from their broadcast towers, which would more than likely be located somewhere over the visual horizon.

Good television reception depends on a lot more than the signal gain level of your antenna. The siting and cabling of the antenna is just as important as the signal gain and nearby features such as buildings, hills and even trees can dramatically affect the quality of your TV picture. Adrian Grahams began writing professionally in after training as a newspaper reporter.

His work has been published online and in various newspapers, including "The Cornish Times" and "The Sunday Independent. Since an antenna does not make power, increasing gain in one direction will decrease propagation in another. As you can see in the illustration, using a gain antenna may cause poor performance in a hilly environment. Mobile antenna choice has a lot to do with the physical terrain. On an open and flat highway, a high gain antenna will be better…3 dB, 6 dB, etc.

The other type of gain is directional and is important for base stations. The fact that we can't immediately see the RF waves sometimes confuses people, but don't worry, once you know what gain really is, you can determine if more or less is better for any particular application.

An antenna that radiates energy equally in all directions and has no preference for radiation in any direction is said to have "no gain". You would say this no-gain situation is 0 dBi. Omni-directionality is said to have no directivity preference for any direction , as opposed to having the signal concentration in a particular direction, and the amount of signal in a preferred direction is quantified as gain.

If you want to focus all of the signal to direct it to a distant target, then the high gain antenna is definitely the best choice. High gain antennas need to be pointed in a preferred direction to send RF signal so that limited signal can be intensified in desired location, as illustrated below. Remember, "gain" is simply stealing radiated energy from some directions to intensify others. The higher the dBi number of the antenna, the higher the gain, but less of a broad field pattern, meaning that the signal strength will go further but in a narrower direction, as illustrated in the diagram below.

As you can see, higher gain is not automatically better - it depends on the application. If you don't intend to point your antenna in a particular direction, then you don't need much gain.

For example, say you want to set up a wireless network in an outdoor beer garden of a pub.