I have installed a UniFi UMR-Industrial 4G router in my caravan and mounted a PR1KCO28 combo antenna on the roof. Router is capable of using nearby WiFi as WAN and the access point is only 4-5 meters aways in an open garage, ceiling mounted facing downwards.
Using the built-in antennas I get a signal of approximately -40 dBm on the router.
Connecting the external Teltonika antennas causing the signal to drop to -65 dBm and Tx retries explode.
I see similar, poor performance when using LTE WAN.
Just to make sure I understand the situation correctly: you are using the UniFi router together with the mentioned COMBO MIMO (PR1KCO28) antennas, and in that setup the Wi-Fi signal from the access point is noticeably weaker than when using the default stock antennas that came with the UniFi device, correct?
Could you let me know the Wi-Fi gain specification of the built-in antennas?
Any additional details or clarifications you can share would be greatly appreciated.
When using the external antenna, the router connects on a 40 MHz channel bandwidth, which explains why the signal appears noticeably weaker. This is because signal strength and coverage depend on the selected wireless channel bandwidth, the wider the channel, the more throughput you can achieve, but the signal propagation tends to degrade compared to 20 MHz.
The default internal antennas supplied with your router only support 20 MHz bandwidth, so you wouldn’t notice this effect with them.
In your case, I’d suggest trying to set the AP’s channel bandwidth to 20 MHz. I expect that with the PR1KCO28 external antenna, the signal strength and stability should improve under this configuration.
This doesn’t seem to make any difference. I am still getting -69dBm on 20MHz width.
As mentioned the LTE signal is also very weak and even the GPS is off by 1000 meters +/- when using external antennas.
To identify why the results differ from the default antennas, a lab environment test with the UniFi device itself would be required. Since our antennas have not been tested with this manufacturer’s hardware, we unfortunately cannot define what signal level should be considered good or poor in your particular environment. This would also require detailed knowledge of the UniFi router’s hardware design and the Wi-Fi chipset in use.
In your case, to determine the proper signal and expected performance, we strongly recommend using the combo MIMO antenna with a compatible and tested Teltonika router, as this would provide a reliable baseline for comparison.
