Short Guide on Picking a Cell Phone Signal Booster
If your voice calls tend to be jittery, crackly sounding, you barely hear your caller or they hardly hear you, the betting is that you’re experiencing poor cellular reception. Oftentimes, it is due to a limited number of cell towers in your area. However, some things are beyond the control of your carrier. The truth is that surrounding buildings, rocky landscapes, dense greenery, and heavy rainfalls may drown out radio waves. Even your own house may become an obstacle if it features thick brick walls, metal beams, and a thick layer of insulation. Does it mean that you’re doomed to live in the mobile blackspot? No, it doesn’t if you allow a cell phone signal booster to improve your reception.
What are Cell Phone Signal Boosters and How do they Work
As we have already pointed out, reception inside your house may not be that great. However, if you go outside, you’ll notice that there are more bars on the screen of your device. So, it would be great to take the quality of reception found outside and bring it inside the premises.
This is exactly what a cell phone signal booster does. It has an external antenna that draws radio waves from the nearby cell towers and sends them indoors. But that’s not it. An antenna is connected to an amplifier, a device that increases signal strength up to 30 times.
On top of that, advanced models feature noise reduction functions to remove cracking, screeching, hum and other types of distortion. As you can see, mobile signal booster implements a three-stage improvement technique.
Types of Cell Phone Signal Boosters
The majority of signal boosters found on the market are analog ones. If your kit consists of an external antenna, internal antenna, and amplifier, and cables, it is 100% an analog device. It is also known by the name of a bi-directional repeater since it improves both reception and transmission (i.e. the signal going from your phone to a base station). Analog signal boosters are inexpensive, easy to use, and reliable.
If you’d like to go with something fancier, digital (smart) boosters will fit the bill. Their main benefit is that they remove noise before broadcasting reinforced signals inside the premises. Thanks to notice reduction, you are able to achieve much clearer communication let alone dB gain is significantly better.
These devices also feature a more elegant design when an indoor antenna may be hidden inside the housing and outdoor antenna is absent whatsoever. All these bells and whistles come at a cost though – smart amplifiers are much more expansive than analog counterparts.
Carrier-Specific and Multi-Band Amplifiers
Some models of signal repeaters are able to capture only a specific frequency. Those are called single-band or carrier-specific boosters. If you live alone, or your entire family is connected to the same network provider, a single-band device will do. It will cost cheaper than more versatile models.
Multi-band signal boosters are capable of picking various frequencies. This means that they can help improve cellular communication across 3G and 4G networks lend by various providers. This is a preferable option for offices, commercial properties, and public places.
You can safely purchase multi-band repeaters for rural and metropolitan areas alike. Oftentimes, network carriers introduce two different bands for these areas so it is important to have a device able of capturing and enhancing all sorts of frequencies.
Mobile and Stationary Boosters
More often than not, signal boosters are stationary, i.e. they are used inside houses and other buildings. If it’s required though, you can move a repeater and its antennas to a spot but the point is that it’s used in a motionless environment.
Domestic and commercial repeaters have a respectable coverage area ranging from 1000 to tens of thousands sq. feet. Depending on the area of application (apartment, house, office, etc.), they can handle from 1 to dozens of simultaneous connections.
Along with that, people often need to improve mobile signals on the go. For this purpose, you can use vehicle boosters. They are installed inside cars, trucks, RVs, boats, yachts, etc. They don’t boast mind-blowing coverage areas but this is not necessary anyway. You can find models designed for a single user and multi-users alike.
