WiFi Woes? Build Your Own Helical Antenna
Are You Receiving Me?
When you run into WiFi signal issues it can be quite a pain trying to resolve the problem. WiFi signal boosters and repeaters are often next to worthless, many models simply don’t boost the signal much at all, or you need to string several together to get line of sight to your router. The days of external antenna ports on laptops have gone, so the old Pringles can trick only works on a few models now. If you have a spare satellite dish you could always stick a receiver in the middle of it, but that can be a bit of an eyesore.
Hackaday posted a project which just might be the solution you need, with instructions on how to build your own helical antenna. This should be strictly for receiving, as some countries have very strict limits on how much power you are allowed to broadcast over the 2.4GHz range. It is quite effective at boosting your reception, outperforming a Maxlink antenna that Dereksgc bought for comparison. You will need access to a 3D printer to make use of the CAD files provided to create the antenna. There is also a helical antenna calculator which you can use to determine the specifications you will need.
In this case the helix comfortably outperforms a commercial patch antenna and a laptop’s internal antenna, making such an antenna a very worthwhile piece of work whether you’re making a fixed link or indulging in a bit of casual wardriving.
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As a ham radio operator, Idk about this one.
A Yagi antenna, or some form of dish antenna would be better in just about every case I can think of.
The benefit of Helical antennas is that they’re circularly polarized. That’s why they’re used for satellite and multirotor comms / command and control.
Wi-Fi is almost always linearly polarized, and the helical antenna isn’t helping you here. In fact, you’d lose some effective gain because of the polarization mismatch.
– WU2F
Circular polarization is a poor choice for WiFi…as previously stated, almost every WiFi signal and antenna platform I have used or designed, were mainly linear. Patch antennas are not circular, neither are vertical/collinear by design.
I have two commercial antennas, dual band.
A dish with proper focal adjustment would be a far better choice for ground based comms.