On 09/08/2015 04:00 PM, Carlos Alvarez wrote:
You can't compare home range with commercial range. Many commercial buildings have far more challenging environments as far as noise and blocking surfaces. Going from one floor to another is always worse than horizontal range for a variety of reasons. For example, antennas are generally oriented to spread signal horizontally, but not vertically. The higher the dB gain, the more true this is. My best guess is that a DECT base probably has a 3dB antenna, which means 3dB more power to the sides as to the top. Every 3dB is a doubling of the power, because it's a logarithmic scale. Most commercial buildings employee concrete/rebar between floors, unlike the simple wood in most homes. Both of those are terrible for radio signals.
That makes sense. I'm not sure how "tall" the doughnut created by a typical DECT base is. What I do know is that in both office buildings where I've used my Platronics headset, I can go about two floors down and gain considerable lateral distance without issue. The point about concrete and rebar is a good one. It makes me wonder what ticky-tacky this office building's composed of! -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/