Homemade iPhone 5 antenna
Homemade iPhone 5 antenna
(OP)
Hi guys,
I'm like to go wild camping and trekking and often find myself in remote areas without reception. It would be handy to have reception particularly to use GPS based apps. I was wondering if anyone knows how I could go about making and attaching an antenna to my iPhone 5. I've seen a lot of videos which suggest an antenna based on wavelength, but they suggest attaching the antenna to a port the iPhone doesn't have. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I'm like to go wild camping and trekking and often find myself in remote areas without reception. It would be handy to have reception particularly to use GPS based apps. I was wondering if anyone knows how I could go about making and attaching an antenna to my iPhone 5. I've seen a lot of videos which suggest an antenna based on wavelength, but they suggest attaching the antenna to a port the iPhone doesn't have. Does anyone have any suggestions?





RE: Homemade iPhone 5 antenna
It would a lot easier to simply download the map tiles in advance, while you're still at a wifi hotspot or within cellular coverage. Many GPS apps provide this facility to download the maps that you'll need in advance. I do this all the time, traveling to UK and Asia. Works perfectly.
What others may neglect to tell you, but I will, is that an iPhone using GPS continuously will have a flat battery in about two hours. A $99 dedicated GPS can go for 12 or more hours on two AA cells.
RE: Homemade iPhone 5 antenna
Now, I've not tried this with a phone before, but have done this with plenty of ISM band wireless devices and you can quickly get 6 db or more of improvement if you know which direction the service providers cell phone tower is.
However note this - cell phone towers determine the range to the phone by measuring the time for a (control handshake) signal to be sent to the phone and for the phone to reply. If the distance is too far the cell tower will resuse to connect even if you have good signal strength. I've seen this happen in the Smoky Mountains of East TN.
RE: Homemade iPhone 5 antenna
You could try a simple reflector design and get more gain depending on reflector size. How you'd make it for hiking convenience is the challenging part (rolled up wire/metal mesh screen door? use reflector curved in the horizontal plane only would make it simpler?)
You should know where the cell towers are relative to you knowing GPS coordinates and use a compass to set the cell phone/reflector in the correct direction.
Interesting note on the time delay measurement Comcokid. Makes sense, long range calls slow thruput.
RE: Homemade iPhone 5 antenna