Electrical – Get phone signal where there’s no signal

accessibilityelectricalinternettelephone

I have a tiny house between two hills, in a mountain area. For few weeks I've been searching how to get phone signal there.

There are two problems:

  • there is no electricity
  • the hills are blocking the signal from the antenna tower

I think the electricity problem is not a concern for now—I can use a generator or build something that will produce enough power for the things I need.

I'm wondering how to get phone signal, including a good 3G connection which will allow me browse the internet, eventually.

What would be the most reliable way to get phone signal at my house?

I imagine the scenario is like this:

             /\                   __🗼_
  /\        /  \   ______________/      \
 /  \      /    \_/
/    \_🏡_/

My idea: build a high enough tower near me house and put on top of it an gsm antenna which will bring the signal down in my house. However I don't know:

  • What would be the best way to build such a tower (I want to build it on my land, not affecting my neighbours' lands—e.g. by adding long wires to sustain my tower)?
  • How can I find what's the minimal height where I can get strong enough signal? I've been thinking to use a drone which will take my phone in the sky and using an app to screenshot the phone screen from time to time, but I'm not sure how that will work. Maybe there are better ways?
  • Probably an antenna would need electricity. What is the best way to get electricity from in this case?
  • Ultimately, what's the name of this job? How can I find experts in my area who are good in such measurements and eventually guide me on the implementation?

Satellite phone is not a solution in my case since there are no companies around providing that.

Best Answer

Google Earth is actually quite helpful without fussing with drones at getting a pretty good idea of the profile along a path. You have to look for it, but it's there in the detailed information about the path. Bring up GE, find you, find the tower, draw a path. There are probably other programs, but that's the one I happen to know and use. Radio signals do not propagate through dirt (or very poorly) so you need the antenna high enough that it can see the antenna at the other end.

Antenna towers of any significant height are expensive and can be hazardous if not built correctly (thus, expensive - cheaper to construct a properly engineered expensive at the outset tower than to have a large cheap home-made antenna tower fall on people, houses, vehicles...)

Solar panels, a charge controller and batteries are often the best source of power for an off-grid antenna system. Fueled generators are expensive to run, long-term. Solar systems are expensive at first, but inexpensive to run if properly constructed.

Generically, you are looking at (normally antenna) tower construction. Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) might be another path to investigate.

Coming to an arrangement with landowners of the top of one of the hills, and along the path from your house to the top of the hill may be considerably cheaper than building a large antenna tower.

For smallish antenna towers, sometimes a large flagpole will work. Many of those are arranged so that the pole can be easily lowered to the ground, making it comparatively easy/safe to install and maintain the device on the top of them. Other towers need to be climbed, and that is a hazardous occupation in and of itself.

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