I have a RUTC50 mounted on an heavy mobile machine. I currently have two antennas mounted on the machine (MobileMark od5-2400-5500mod2 ) to get the connection on a Wifi network. I found an old topic open talking taht in the forum but it’s closed now Closed topic.
How the modem is working with two antennas instead of 3 ? What are the impacts of having two antennas instead of 3 regarding performances ( any metrics available ?) and Wifi protocol ?
The RUTC50 features a 3x3 MIMO wireless architecture for its dual-band Wi-Fi 6 engine, relying on three separate radio frequency chains connected to the three physical RP-SMA Wi-Fi ports on the chassis.
When you leave one port empty, the device does not crash or throw an error; it simply downshifts its hardware spatial paths. The internal wireless chipset detects that one path is missing and dynamically drops back to operating as a 2x2 MIMO device.
If you choose to connect only 2 antennas, we suggest connecting to the two outside ports, leaving the middle port empty. Based on the internal chipset design, leaving the middle port disconnected will result in the lowest overall performance penalty.
It is also worth noting a physical hardware compatibility detail: the MobileMark antenna you are using features an N-Type connector, whereas the RUTC50 uses RP-SMA connectors. To connect these antennas directly to the router, you will need to ensure you are using an appropriate coaxial adapter cable (N-Type to RP-SMA).
Regarding the overall performance impact: by leaving out the third antenna, you will lose one spatial stream and may experience slightly reduced range or signal diversity. However, the device will continue working perfectly fine with native Wi-Fi 6 technology on the remaining paths.
Lastly, of course, given the possibility, we do recommend the use of our antennas, which you can find here (compatible with the RUTC50 device):