Antenna

This is very complex but I’ll try to explain a little bit. Is dBi larger the better? NO. Please see the image below.

It depends on where your Miner is located. If you are on the mountain and there are very few Miners nearby, you should choose a higher dBi Antenna to reach miners in the city. In this case, maybe a directional Antenna will be better to cover one side. If you are in a city where there are a lot of Miners nearby, you should choose a lower dBi Antenna because the witness RSSI quality is very important to your income. The Bobcat’s Antenna dBi is 4, it’s a good balance of distance and coverage. High dBi Antenna can talk further but RSSI quality is not good in many cases. You may see a lot of invalid witnesses even if it’s near your Miner. That is one of the reason that some miners have a lot of witnesses but income lower than expected. One of the Antenna I’ve tested only gets 0.01 level tokens each witness but it had witnesses every 5 minutes.

This is very serious. You will be punished. When the witness RSSI is too high, it’s possible that you are putting multiple Miners together and asserting fake addresses. In this case, it’s possible you loss the beacons or your scale becomes lower and lower. I’m not sure if it can be recovered but there’s a score to affect your income. Even your miner is working now, you will loss income with the upgrade of the blockchain.

It’s best to connect the antenna to your Miner without any cable. But because most of the Miners are indoor only, you will need a cable to connect to your outdoor Antenna. Keep in mind that the longer the cable you use, the more dBi loss. Below is a calculator to help you calculate it.

Parameters:
Line Type: Belden 8240 RG-58 Belden 9201 RG-58 Belden 8215 RG-6A Belden 8237 RG-8 Belden 9913 RG-8 (LL) Belden 9258 RG-8X Belden 8213 RG-11 Belden 8261 RG-11A Belden 8219 RG-58A Belden 8259 RG-58C Belden 8212 RG-59 Belden 8263 RG-59B Belden 9269 RG-62A Belden 8216 RG-174/U Belden 82678 RG-213/U Davis RF Bury-Flex Times LMR-100A Times LMR-200 Times LMR-240 Times LMR-400 Times LMR-600 Times LMR-900 Wireman CQ102 Wireman CQ106 Wireman CQ125 Wireman CQ127 Wireman CQ110 Heliax LDF4-50A 1/2 in. Heliax LDF5-50A 7/8 in. Heliax LDF6-50 1-1/4 in. Wireman 551 (#18 solid) Wireman 552 (#16 stranded) Wireman 553 (#18 stranded) Wireman 554 (#14 stranded) Wireman 551 (wet) Wireman 552 (wet) Wireman 553 (wet) Wireman 554 (wet) 300 ohm Tubular 450 ohm WLL 600 ohm Open Ideal 50 ohm Ideal 75 ohm
Line Length: Feet Meters
Frequency: MHz
Load SWR::1
Power In:Watts
Results:
Matched Loss:dB
SWR Loss:dB
Total Loss:dB
Power Out:Watts
Power Loss:%

It depends on your Antenna dBi, the length of the Cable and the distribution of miners around you. To achieve the best SNR, you can choose a cable with lower loss for example GB58(thin), LRM400(thick). But keep in mind the best SNR doesn’t mean a good thing, a bad RSSI and SNR combination will cause your witness be invalid or very low HNT. Testing Antenna is difficult.
There are many factors. I’m tesing over 20 types of Antennas for now and will keep updating this page. To find the loss of your cable, please use the calculator above.

Then how should I choose the Antenna? To be continued.
Where should I locate it? To Be Continued.

See Bobcat Antenna Repair.

There’s a gateway config file in Miners defined the dBi gain and frequencies. These configurations will be used to calculate if a received radio is valid. If your Antenna doesn’t work well, it may send packets don’t meet the configuration. For example, maybe there will be a “no match of right hand value { error, bad_tx_power }” error. So before you switching to another Antenna, try the stock Antenna first to make sure your Miner works.