topic MR42E single antenna? in Wireless

MR42E single antenna?

dagger1982 — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:26:51 GMT

I don't know why but our warehouse/distribution center only uses a single external antenna on our MR42E AP's. Tell me, how unhealthy is this for the AP?

thx

Re: MR42E single antenna?

aleabrahao — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:36:29 GMT

Basically you are just transmitting a signal by one antenna. I think it's not a good idea.

Re: MR42E single antenna?

Ryan_Miles — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:56:57 GMT

We have this bit in documentation. Is it a long shot? Yes probably, but be warned it could happen.

From a performance perspective if you have an AP without antennas those ports are still attempting to be used by the radios. Obviously the tx/rx performance will be severely impacted without an antenna. And, with a MIMO AP it's expecting to use all antenna ports.

There's no situation in which running with disconnected antenna ports would be the correct way to deploy.

Re: MR42E single antenna?

dagger1982 — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 01:14:16 GMT

Thank you. Exactly what I was looking for. I worked with transceivers in the USAF and know a missing antenna is a bad thing.

Re: MR42E single antenna?

Ryan_Miles — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 01:21:21 GMT

Hey, me too. I did F16 Avionics in the USAF back in the 90s. Man, I'm old.

Re: MR42E single antenna?

dagger1982 — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 01:33:15 GMT

Heavy avionics 85-06. C130, C141, C5, etc. LOL I'm older. IT is my second life.

Re: MR42E single antenna?

Thomas Obbekaer Thomsen — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 07:41:32 GMT

As mentioned by everyone, it's not "the correct" way of running your AP (aka. bad 🙂 ). But you could get support to disable the other radio chains, and only have the one with the connected antenna enabled.

It would still be bad, because of no diversity or mimo features would be in use, but better then running something where the same features would ruin things more when running, ehhh, "improper antenna configurations" .