Molex microhard potential range

Eli Pollack

Re: Molex antenna placement and potential range

Hello,

I am working on a project where we are implementing the microhard technology (2.4 GHz, model pMDDL2450). We want to use the microhard radios for long range, at a maximum of 6km, or 3km for each module. Our setup consists of a master module on a flight deck add on board, a repeater module on another flight deck add on board, and one or two slave modules on carrier boards at the GCS. Is this kind of range possible with the stock antennas, and if not would upgrading to omnidirectional antennas or changing power settings have a substantial impact?

This question is similar to one posted a few months ago, but it was unanswered and our use case is a bit diffferent so I wanted to create a new post.

Thanks,
Eli

Vinny

@Eli-Pollack Hi Eli,
To accurately assess this you would need to go through a link-budget analysis.
A key parameter is the antenna gain that helps your theoretical range (along with many others), so you can directly compare (with all else being equal) the distance improvement by just changing the antenna from ones you have now to ones you are investigating.
For reference, here is the basic Link Budget overview, with a decent reference formula to help you understand your link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_budget#

At the bottom of that wiki, they have links to other calculators that can help you translate these losses/gains into Free-space LOS distance (not including multi-path).
Even if you do not know all the other variables, you can for all intents and purposes treat them as "fixed" for a comparison of antenna quality/gains, and just plug in numbers that get you in the ballpark of what you are practically seeing in the field.

When you have a repeater in the mix, it can effectively be treated as a gain (hopefully ) so even with that, you'll need to make some assumptions, and normalize those numbers to just look at your antenna solutions.

Hope this helped!

Eli Pollack

Thank you for the help! Will update this post when we are finished testing.