I have a decommissioned satellite dish antenna and I’d like to get a stronger signals from nearby Wi-Fi source.
I could mount an antenna at the focal point of the dish, as long as the router allowed external antenna.
Would this conflict with modern routers that have beam forming technology?
Anyone ever try this?
It can work. It works much better if there are no obstructions in the beam path - using a reflector or other beam-concentrating antenna does not make "the problems with trees and buildings in the way" go away.
I have played around with this just using a stainless steel bowl as a crude reflector. For actual deployments, I use real antennas built from the ground up for the purpose; so the closest I've gotten to repurposing a satellite dish would be that stainless steel bowl.
Small hint towards success - separate the concepts of "router" and "WiFi access point" in your mind. Very common to conflate them. Also helps you miss most of the gear that will do the sort of job you want to do here, which are the latter, not the former. Nothing about the function of a router has anything to do with WiFi, other than low-end consumer gear putting the two in one box.
Maybe, but there are lots of details about digital signal processing that are more complicated than just using a reflector.
Luckily, one of them is a simple off-the-shelf solution: your antenna. Most consumer wifi equipment uses an omni-directional antenna, so it can receive and send in any direction. For a fixed power you can imagine that some of your signal goes off in a direction you don't care about.
Instead your could try directional antennas (which may include a dish) and point then directly at their stationary target. A web search for "directional wifi antenna" will get you started.
Yes, this works. I tried it using my own router which used a coaxial antenna. I replaced it with a coaxial cable connected to parabolic reflector antenna. It increased the range of the communication.
I live in a densely populated area of the North 24 Pgs. Normally I get 9.1 metres (39 feet 6 inches) range from a smartphone's mobile hotspot; with this setup the signal range increased to about 22 metres (72 feet 2 inches). The line of sight in my locality was 16 metres from the receiver, so some shallow obstacle bypass was observed, but mostly the signal was blocked, characterised by drop in signal quality, also even slight misalignments causes signal loss
Yes it can easily double the signal and it costs you nothing but a little of your time so give it a try.
Two word answer: websearch "cantenna". (Summary: directional antennas work and can be made surprisingly simple; parabolic is often overkill. Many designs have been posted; I used the side-fed coffee can design.)
