Banana Pi BPI-R4 Wifi 7 BE14 - Pigtails and Antennas

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it, gonna buy the rg178 cables from Tuolnk and the 6x antennas from taoglas

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If it’s not too much trouble, could you give me your opinion about this older tri-band antenna from Taoglas compared to the previous ones:

The dip in return loss falls outside the 2.4GHz frequency range on the board orientation that best matches the R4, which is unfortunate. It may be a little poorer performing at 2.4GHz. I like how closely the efficiency curves match between straight and bent (bent tends to be worse), but they don’t publish those curves broken down by board orientation. All the board orientation breakdowns are just return loss at 2.4GHz. So it’s really hard to compare. What I see looks good, and if those efficiency numbers pan out it’s a good antenna. But it’s hard to know how it will perform on an R4 bent.

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Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.

So best to go for the other one I guess

As far as I know, and I may be wrong, both tri-band dipole antennas from Taoglas are good, but the “gain” of the older antenna is 3 dBi on most bands and the “gain” of the newer antenna is 5 dBi on most bands; the one with higher gain ratings will give you a little extra range, but you pay more for it.

Information about antenna “gain”:

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Cool thanks, the stock ones are horrible I can’t even get a signal upstairs in my house and if I do it’s running at 5mbps lol, compared to my router provided by isp that can do 300mbos in my weakest room

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I’m using these https://www.amazon.de/dp/B09V4YXMZN as I needed longer pigtails. They seem to work so far, but haven’t done any speedtests or analysis on the signal quality yet.

I’d like to share new data about the Antsym 5 GHz antennas that I’ve purchased as a replacement for the stock BPI ones. Now that I’ve done signal measurement (at 2.5 meters in direct line-of-sight) it looks like they’re not any better after all. I guess that does it for cheap antennas for me. I’ll try to get my hands on those rather expensive tri-band antennas from Taoglas and report back on how they perform.

band	brand		router signal	NIC signal/noise	
5ghz	sinovoip		-15			-38/-77
5ghz	antsym			-14			-39/-74

6ghz	sinovoip		-25			-39/-76
6ghz	antsym			-27			-43/-75
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I think this is the correct way to place the WiFi and Cellular antennas on the BPI-R4 when you have a WiFi 7 module (BE14) and a 5G module (RM520N-GL) installed. It is recommended that the cable has the same length for all antennas on each radio, maybe 20 cm cables (IPEX-1) for all WiFi antennas (mentioned above) and 10 cm cables (IPEX-4) for the Cellular antennas:

Antenna Placement #1
--------------------
2/5g         6g
Leave this space between WiFi antennas or use it for cellular antennas
6g           5g
2/5g         6g

.

Antenna Placement #2
--------------------
5g           6g
Leave this space between WiFi antennas or use it for cellular antennas
6g           2/5g
2/5g         6g

.

Antenna Placement #3
--------------------
5g           6g
Leave this space between WiFi antennas or use it for cellular antennas
6g           6g
2/5g         2/5g

.

Antenna Placement #4
--------------------
       5g
6g           6g
Leave this space between WiFi antennas
Leave this space between WiFi antennas
2/5g        2/5g
       6g

Information about cable and antenna placement:

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Btw if anyone reads this later, the 2nd one is available cheaper at digikey

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this is a great explanation on all this works & thank you however 6Ghz/EHT is not mentioned apart from the pics … any other points to make for 6GHz ?

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And how would you recommend to orient the antennas? Is there also a recommendation? (Eg one horizontal, one vertical, …)

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I purchased the antennas and will post here how they go

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1. MiMo works equally on all radios/bands, which means that the above information about cable and antenna placement on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios also applies to the 6 GHz radio.

  • As explained here:

2. The 6 GHz band has worse penetration through walls, objects, floors and ceilings than the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.

  • As explained here:

3. Behfor recommends using the bands in this way and makes a ping comparison between them:

Watch these videos, they show you where to place the wireless router in your home and the best antenna positions for the wireless router:

  1. Where to place the wireless router in your home.

  2. Optimal Positions for Your Router’s Antennas in a Single Story House.

  3. Best Antenna Positions for Wireless Router in a 2-Story House.

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New Taoglas antenna with new rg178 cables

Old antenna with old cables

Both in direct line of sight 6ghz

Signal strength is also much better than previously, these antennas are really good, quite happy with the purchase

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Now that’s pretty decent improvement. Would you mind posting the signal strength figures?

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Top of the staircase in my house

I’ll get 6Ghz up in a bit

Edit: 6ghz

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Very dramatic difference, thank you.

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Only issue is while the signal is stronger than my isp router i still cant get 5ghz in my weakest room while the ISP one can

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