Every modern person has faced mobile connection problems. The worst possible situation is when cell phone reception is bad at home or at work where you spend most of the time.
With the help of engineers one of our long term customers from France tested Nikrans MA450GW cell phone booster. Below you will find his detailed report with the details of the experiment.
Operation Principle
Nikrans MA450GW is a dualband cell phone repeater that comprises the functions of GSM and 3G boosters. The device comes with outdoor and indoor antennas, cables and power supply — everything you will need for proper installation and usage. The model stabilizes cell phone signals at GSM 900MHz and 3G 2100 MHz simultaneously which makes the device compatible with almost all mobile providers of France and the entire EU. The coverage capacity of MA450GW is up to 450m².
Purpose: boost GSM and 3G signals
Repeater installation is a very simple process and doesn’t take more than 30 minutes. The mayor thing to do is to install outdoor and indoor antennas. Then you place the repeater in one of the rooms or in the attic and connect it with both antennas by cables. A detailed manual facilitates a lot the process.
Note that the MA450GW repeater has five LED indicators that signal about operating status of the device and help you to achieve maximum possible signal amplification.
We mounted cell phone booster system in an office with complicated planning and an area of about 400 square meters.
Despite the proximity of base stations, a mobile signal doesn't reach some corners of the office due to armored concrete floor. The signal decreases or even fades away resulting in dropped phone calls and constant interruptions of 3G Internet.
The signal quality was tested with the help of three cell phones: LG Sol (SFR), iPhone4 (Bouygues Telecom) and ZTE Libra (Orange). And both phone connection and 3G availability of SFR, Bouygues and Orange was tested.
The experiment was carried out twice — before and after turning on the repeater. The results are shown in the schemes below. Green points indicate places with stable mobile reception (lower than -84 dBm), yellow points show locations with average signal connection (from -85 to -99 dBm) and red points spot the places with bad signal quality (over -100 dBm).
I can say that the results from different mobile operators vary by 5 dBm approximately so below we give you the results of experiments without mentioning certain operators. As for cell phone brands, they didn’t influence the results of our tests at all, so our conclusion is – the repeater suits equally well for all cell phone brands and models.
GSM connection, Repeater turned off
It is evident at first sight that the most problematic area is Room 2. That was confirmed in practice: phone calls in this area often get dropped; the audibility is poor with strange background noise. Red zone has –100 to –106 dBm signal level. Room 1 features –67 to –77 dBm, and signal reception here is perfect. And Room 3 has –89 dBm signal level and gives average connection quality.
GSM connection, Repeater turned on
We mounted the MA450GW repeater in Room 1. According to the engineer, this is the most appropriate place for the system. The quality of signal reception significantly improved in the radius of 20 meter. The areas where we used to get –105 dBm only now have –70 dBm. The signal level in other rooms now varies from good to perfect with no problems with audibility.
3G connection, Repeater turned off
The most problematic zone is the same as for GSM but it is wider and the signal level is lower (-120 dBm) which means that 3G connection gets constantly interrupted. Room 1 receives -86 dBm 3G signal, and Room 3 has got -90 dBm signal level.
3G connection, Repeater turned on
We managed to get rid of “red” zone. Besides, very good 3G reception has stretched out in the radius of 18 meters, 5 meters more has benefited from signal improvement as well but the result is not so evident.
Summary
Summing up all the experiments, it is worth noting significant improvement of cell phone and 3G connection of all French providers. I can personally confirm utility and functionality of the cell phone repeater. It works as advertised which is exactly what we need for our office.
