The art of installing antenna to harness the most signal from the cell tower

One common questions we get asked here at the Booster Store is the antenna installation process. This is the most important step when installing a home system, office system or vehicle system. The antenna DOES NOT have to be in the line of sight of the cell phone tower. One of the main reasons for not getting good reception is that the building where you are experiencing poor reception is due to its hidden location in a valley or surrounded by trees and other buildings. We recognize that and it is not possible in most cases to install the antenna higher up then 5 to 10 feet from the roof of the building. The antennas are sensitive to cell phone signal, so having an antenna outside the building is good enough in most cases.

The two types of antennas used in buildings are as below:

a) Omnidirectional antennas are not direction sensitive
b) Yagi Antenna is direction sensitive

Installing an Omnidirectional antennas is very simple since it does not require to be directed at the cell tower, since they are sensitive all around. The Yagi on the other hand requires some precision.

A signal meter like the one below can come in handy, since the signal meter detects the signal and reads the output in simple numbers. It is recommended to use a signal meter when installing for large areas of the building.

However it is not a solution we can justify the cost when someone is doing just one installation a it is for personal use. The alternate method would be to use the technique we used when installing old school Television antenna. The yagi antenna, if you noticed has similar cross bars like older TV antennas. They not only look the same, they also function the same and built with same principle. This method requires two people, so the requirement for this method to work is for you to have atleast one friend! Here are the steps below:

Step 1

Pick a location outside the building, on top of the roof preferably. Or on the side of the building or in some case out on the balcony can work, if only the cell tower is on that side of the balcony. Installation requires a pole (not included in the kits). You can add them to your checkout from HERE

Step 2

Put your phone on test mode with the help of instructions from the link provided. Most popular phones and covered in that test mode guide, but their is a possibility that some may not be provided. Not to worry, you can simply use the number of bars on your phone as a guide to determine the best signal reception direction to install the antenna.

Step 3

Plug in the amplifier to a power supply, install the indoor antenna at the desired location. Note: you may have to uninstall the indoor antenna if the final position of the outdoor antenna has to be changed. Point the outdoor antenna at some arbitrary direction and turn the amplifier ON to see what kind of signal strength are you reading on your phone (or the number of bars if your phone is not in test mode), make a note of that reading.

Step 4

Now, turn the outdoor yagi antenna approximately 45 degrees, which is quarter of a turn, wait for 30 sec and note the reading on the phone you see inside the house, make a note of the reading (or the number of bars if your phone is not in test mode). Repeat step 3 & 4 one more time to complete a full rotation from where you started!

Pick the location that has the lowest number (since the phone test mode gives you the results in negative number, the lowest is the highest). If you are using the signal bars then, pick the location that has the highest signal bar.

You have installed the directional yagi antenna successfully .