I was trying to get a wifi signal to my car through a neighbor's apartment. The AP without any help couldn't do it (no signal at all). But with this ugly bit of work, it's pretty good. Ugly, but effective.
is that mesh you used? would it be any different to alfoil (aluminium foil)? that's what i use on the cardboard parabola's i use
Yes, it is mesh. Actually, it is aluminum screen for windows, but mesh sounds so much more technical I could have tried foil, but is would have been harder. The layers were cut individually and the surface of the parabola isn't smooth so attaching the foil to the foam would have been a problem, at least I think it would have. The screen is a bit more robust as well. And if I remember some radio theory, mesh or a solid reflector work equally well as a ground plane. It's still a bit hard to deal with. I moved the rig when I took pictures and I did not get as much strength when I tried to use it again later. I think I was too far out of the beam. The deep parabola means that the beam should be very tight in the axis of the curve. I'm depending ont he spread int he other axis to get me the coverage I need. At least, I think that's the theory.
I made something like this a while back. used a shoebox and aluminum foil. Used it to boost the range of my shameful 802.11b usb wifi. It worked really well, but did have a bit of an attitude. After one too many arguments with it, I decided to go wired.
The template I drew in CAD: This way, I could print to scale, and tailor the design myself. I used a LISP routine I found online to draw the parabola. All the ones online are not terribly deep. This allows for a wider beam that should be easier to get into. I wanted somethign a bit more narrow, and this very deep design is very directional. I connected the nav system in my car to my UMPC to do updates yesterdy and I found I had to tweak the angle I placed the antenna at to get into the beam. Hopefully this means I'm not disturbing my neighbors. The circle at the focus is the diameter of the antenna. It is 6.25 inches from the base line to the opening, and ~10.34 inches between the verticle lines. The parabola itself is 8.944 inches wide at the opening, and 5 inches deep (from opening to the reflector). I have not done any RF calculations on the reflector.
